


The Substitute Bride

by Shivver



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:48:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 30,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26549257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shivver/pseuds/Shivver
Summary: The Doctor investigates one of the most serious time anomalies he's ever encountered, right here on Earth.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 30





	1. Chapter 1

“ _DOCTOR!_ ” 

Donna screamed his name as his hand slipped out of hers, torn away by the press of the crowd, against which she was making little headway. They’d started side-by-side, but by the sheer force of his presence, he’d parted the stream of people with his body and pushed ahead of her, providing a clear wake for her to follow. As he got further ahead, however, their firmly clasped hands slid to hooked fingers, and with one last jostle by the people pushing past on either side, her hand was suddenly empty and she’d lost him. The path in front of her closed, forcing her almost to a stop. 

Straightening her shoulders, she marched forward, determined to swim against the current and break the flow of people around her, but they paid her no heed and she found she had to physically bull her way through. “Shift! Shift! Get outta my way!” she yelled at each person in front of her, using her anger at losing the Doctor to try to forge herself a path. She tried to ignore the fact that she didn’t even know where they’d been going.

As she struggled for every step, she kept scanning the taller people around her for a head of spiky hair and everything else for signs that might tell her where she should be heading, to no avail. After a minute spent working her way against the crowd and no Doctor appearing to fetch her, she began to despair. She could stand off to the side and wait for the rushing people to disperse, but by that time, she’d be too late. All would be lost. The most important moment in the history of the universe was approaching fast; she had to keep going, or it would be lost forever to time.

A hand shot out and grabbed her arm, pulling her into a tunnel off the main path. “There you are!” breathed the Doctor, a bright grin splitting his face. “I thought I lost you.”

Donna squealed with relief and threw her arms around him, then pulled back and socked him on the arm. “You didn’t come back for me!”

“I knew you’d make it.”

“But you didn’t even tell me where it was.” 

The Doctor frowned, trying to remember. “Didn’t I?” 

“No, you wally, you didn’t. ‘Follow me’, you said. ‘It’s just up there,’ you said. I didn’t even know what you were talking about. Lucky you saw me, then.”

“Yeah. Well, you’re here now.” He turned and gestured further down the tunnel at the loose mob of concertgoers and journalists milling about in front of two security guards flanking a closed door. “That’s the door backstage.”

Clapping her hands to her mouth, Donna squealed again, this time in anticipation, and she bounced on her tiptoes. “Oh, I can’t believe I’m here! Going backstage at the Return tour!” She grabbed the Doctor’s arm. “You got our passes, right?”

Nodding, the Doctor reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out his sonic screwdriver. Frowning, he dug deeper into the pocket and came up empty. “Wrong pocket,” he said with a sheepish smile, then began searching his trouser and coat pockets. “It’s here somewhere,” he murmured.

Donna was too excited to care, and she babbled on, unaware that the Doctor was getting increasingly worried about not finding the passes. “The concert was amazing, wasn’t it? I was supposed to go with Susie Mair and Veena but I couldn’t afford it, what with the wedding and all that going on. Nerys offered to buy me a ticket to go with her and Devon, but then I’d’ve been a third wheel. Never be a third wheel with Nerys, that’s a life rule. Oh, but now we’re back in 2008 for it! It’s bloody mad. That’s what a time machine’s for, isn’t it?”

The Doctor knew he needed to keep Donna talking so she wouldn’t notice him searching every possible pocket on his person. “Oh, yes! What’s the point of having a time machine if you can’t catch the iconic concerts. I should take you to Woodstock. You’d love it.”

“Woodstock? Seriously?” Donna rolled her eyes. “Do they call you a Time Lord cos you live so far in the past?” She took a playful swipe at him, then spun to take in the service tunnel. “But never mind! I can’t believe I’m going to meet the Spice Girls!”

“Of course!” he gushed as he dug for the third time in his right jacket pocket. “Just the thing after a good show, meeting the stars backstage.”

“Oh, I just know they’re going to be brilliant. This is the best day of my life, Doctor!”

The Doctor bit his lip, his eyes glimmering just a tad. One might think that vanquishing villains and saving civilisations were the most exciting and satisfying things to him, but nothing compared to seeing that shining smile on his companion’s face. Just then, his fingers brushed a bit of paper tucked deep in the reaches of his dimensional coat pocket. With a flourish, he pulled out the passes and wiggled them right by his silly, toothy grin. “Here they are!” he crooned, then peeled one off and handed it to her.

Donna stared at the pass in her shaking hands like she was holding the Hope Diamond. “I don’t know how you managed to score this! I mean, you got us into the arena with the psychic paper, but this! This is a real backstage pass!”

“Wouldn’t be the same if the pass wasn’t real. But honestly,” he drawled, “that was the easy part. Shilvellian performers love to meet their fans, and if you throw in a bottle of Almorxith brandy, well, they’ll do just about anything.”

Donna’s jaw dropped. “Tell me you’re kidding! The Spice Girls are aliens?”

“Not all of them,” he drawled. 

Donna shivered with excitement. The Doctor had this infuriating teasing smirk that Donna could never penetrate to figure out if he was having her on. “You’re not kidding, are you? Oh, let me guess! Is it -”

“Oo!" the Doctor groaned as he stumbled forward a step. Shaking his head like he was trying to clear it, he blinked hard, his eyes unfocused. Donna grabbed him by the shoulders to steady him and peered up into his face.

"Doctor! Are you all right?"

"Yeah. I'm fine." His eyes were still far away. "That was… that was weird."

"What was?" She tried to get a good look at his eyes to ascertain his stability, but they were flicking about, seeing nothing. Or, perhaps, seeing things that humans couldn’t.

"An anomaly. Like time shifted, just a bit.” He pressed the heel of his hand into his temple. “I've never seen anything like it before. Well, not for centuries, anyway. Disorientating, it is."

"What does it mean?"

"I don't know." Wrenching himself back to the present, the Doctor gazed down the corridor and Donna followed his lead, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. They were still standing in the service tunnel, surrounded by people clutching passes just like theirs and reporters with cameras and press credentials hanging from lanyards around their necks, all waiting for the security guards at the door to signal that they were welcome inside.The only oddity here was the Doctor himself, his face scrunched with confusion as he thumped his temple a few more times.

“I don’t see anything weird,” Donna murmured.

Giving up on rattling his own brain, the Doctor shrugged. "Not all anomalies are dangerous. Most are tiny and innocuous." He flashed her a comforting grin. "I wouldn't worry."

"I would. I'm not having you go spare on me, time boy." She tapped him on the arm with a fist, firm but affectionate.

"I wouldn't dare." He offered her his elbow and she latched onto his arm, hugging close.

The crowd around them shifted toward the door and the Doctor, hopping up on the tips of his toes to peer over their heads, grinned and squeezed Donna’s hand. “They’re still not letting people in, but when they start, it’s gonna take a bit. They’ll be only letting a couple people back at a time, and they’ll check all the credentials.” He felt Donna shiver against him, but when she spoke, she was calm and rational, if a little forced.

“No hurry. We’ve got all the time in the world,” she stated philosophically, though her blue eyes danced.

“Exactly. And if we miss, we can go back around and do it - _OHHH!_ " 

The Doctor stumbled as the world turned inside out. The timestream in his head jerked and warped, sending him reeling as if the ground had bubbled beneath his feet. He lurched into Donna, who not so much caught him as provided a sturdy post for him to collapse over. 

“Oof,” she grunted. “You weigh a tonne! What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

 _What’s happening, indeed?_ a tiny part of his mind wondered. The rest of it tumbled and spun, and welcomed the darkness that descended.


	2. Chapter 2

His companion's name was on his lips the moment the Doctor's eyes opened. "Donna? Donnaaa!" he called as he sprung into a sitting position, startling the people surrounding him. "Where's Donna?" Glancing around in a panic, he tried to push himself to his feet, but was held down by a woman kneeling next to him.

"Sir! Don't get up. You've had a nasty turn." She placed a calming hand on his arm. "It's all right. My name is Tyla. I'm a nurse. Now, let me look at you." She tried to peer into his eyes, but he pushed her away.

“No! Let me up. Where’d she go? She was right here. I fell on top of her.” He tried to twist to look around.

“Sir, please! Please, just lie back and relax.” Placing a firm hand on his chest, she tried to coax him into lying back down.

"I've got to find Donna." He was about to brush Tyla away again when his attention was caught by the man standing behind her, his bright blue skin glistening in the artificial light. "A Crespallion? What’s a Crespallion doing here?" But the brightly-lit dome far above the man’s head answered his question before he voiced it. He was in the Galleria on the second moon orbiting Innusail; he couldn’t mistake the sparkling mosaics on the ceiling for anywhere else. He’d been heading for the food court in search of what he’d been told were the best chips to be found in the galaxy when a sudden dizziness had fogged his head and he’d toppled to the ground. But he’d also been in the O2 Arena, Donna on his elbow and backstage passes in hand, hadn’t he? Grimacing, he rubbed the back of his neck. “Something’s not right.”

“Yes, but we’ve called emergency services and they should be here soon.” She shrugged off her jacket and laid it over his chest and shoulders. “Please lie back and calm down.”

“What?” The Doctor pulled the jacket off. “What’s this for?”

“You’re dangerously hypothermic. And your heart. I didn’t have time to check thoroughly, but your heart rate is elevated and there's an arrhythmia…”

“That’s because I’m not human. You don't know what to listen for.” Balling up the jacket, he thrust it into her hands and jumped up while she fumbled with it. There was a lingering vertigo, but he managed to mask it to appear stable and well. "See? Fit as a fiddle." He flashed her a brilliant grin, and the onlookers began to disperse since the object of their interest no longer appeared to be in distress.

The nurse popped up in front of him, clutching the jacket to her chest. "You were right in front of me when you fell. Something caused that. Human or not, I know you're not well."

"Miss Tyla," the Doctor began, stuffing his hands in his trouser pockets and bobbing a bow at her, "I thank you for your solicitousness, but I already know what happened. I suffered an aevifurcular syncope.”

"A what?" She unfurled her jacket and slipped it on. "Don't make up medical terms."

"I'm not. It's more of a technical term, actually. A disorientation due to the disjunction of two divaricated timelines. Common among time-sensitives. Well,” he drawled, “the effect is common. Timeline divarication isn’t common at all. Quite rare, in fact." He pulled his sonic screwdriver from his pocket and began scanning around. "I wasn't here a minute ago. I was on Earth. Well, not a minute ago. A minute ago, I was here, but this isn't the original timeline, and in that, I was on Earth." He held the screwdriver to his ear, his brow furrowed as he listened to the data it had collected.

"Now don’t worry. You’re going to be fine," Tyla soothed him in a tone she reserved for calming deranged patients. She grasped him firmly by the elbow and coaxed him toward a nearby bench. "Come and sit a spell, won't you? Just to make sure you're well. The paramedics will check you over and I'm sure there's nothing wrong."

"Ah, yes, paramedics." Slipping out of her hold, he caught her hand and kissed it, then backed away a step. "Thank you again, Miss Tyla, but I must be on my way. I've got to find my friend." 

"But mister..."

"Doctor. I'm the Doctor." Flashing her a grateful smile, he spun and disappeared into the crowd.

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

The Doctor hadn't wanted to leave the area in which he'd woken up, but there was no way he would wait where paramedics could get their hands on him. It wasn't as if they'd be able to diagnose or treat him, and all they'd do is prevent him from figuring out what had happened whilst poking him with far too many sharp instruments. Thus, he bulled his way through the crowd in the direction of the TARDIS, rubbing the crystal of the screwdriver in his hand with his thumb.

The readings on the instrument were normal, no anomalies in either space or time in this vaulted shopping mall. This was exactly what he expected: a normal day in a normal place. The problem was in his own head. He had definitely been here alone in the Galleria, but he also remembered being at a Spice Girls concert with Donna, though that was a distant memory, almost as if it had happened to someone else. He spied an empty bench and trotted over to it, sitting down to think hard and try to fix the memory in his mind.

What did he remember about Donna? They had been standing in a service tunnel, chatting as they waited to be allowed backstage after a truly brilliant concert. Before that… The Doctor hunched forward, his hands cupped over his nose and mouth, trying to concentrate on the memories and the timeline. Many adventures with her, big and small, floated through his mind, though they almost felt like stories that someone else had told him, and when he tried to concentrate on them, far stronger memories of them, from this new timeline and not involving Donna, intruded. 

There was that investigation into Adipose Industries with Penny, who'd complained the entire time after he'd loosed her from the chair she’d been tied up in and then pulled her into the supply closet when he'd gone after the main computer core. When it was all over, she couldn't run off fast enough. After a visit to Empoleth in 3429, he'd landed at Pompeii with Mithis, who'd said he wanted to explore the universe but, when brought face-to-face with his distant ancestors, was barely interested and had reacted with disdain for those he considered such primitives. The Doctor had successfully defeated the Pyroviles by inverting the energy converter and triggering the volcano, but not before having to weather a condemning stare from his companion. Thus, after returning the man to Empoleth, he had travelled to the Ood Sphere alone, but only now, with an alternate memory with Donna to compare to, did he realise that he had left Caecilius and his family to die under tonnes of hot ash; there'd been no one to break through his wall of anger and regret and plead with him to save someone. 

After freeing the Ood from their captivity, he'd remained alone through a number of journeys, meeting many people but not finding anyone he cared to travel the universe with. And now, with a deep pang of regret, he realised he had never met Agatha Christie, because there'd been no one to take to a 1920s cocktail party. His memory of the evening lay dim in his mind, entirely eclipsed by the solid image of the author of the acclaimed _The Murder of Roger Ackroyd_ dying at a high-society social after publishing only five novels. He wondered if anyone in Lady Eddison’s household had survived the vespiform’s rage.

The most disturbing thing about these juxtaposed timelines was that the switch between them had been seamless. Though he had lost consciousness, he found that as he explored both the current timeline and the now-alternate history backwards, there were no anomalies, nothing that could explain the sudden shift in reality. Not that he expected any of the races in this shopping mall to be time-sensitive, but no one here seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. This was not likely a natural occurrence, but if it was artificial, the precision of the shift suggested fearsome temporal technology, on par with that of his lost people, and that was not a comforting thought.

 _So, it comes down to this_ , he told himself. _Do I try to find out who or what caused this? Or do I try to restore the original timeline?_ He had to admit to himself that he had no idea where to start looking for a cause or a perpetrator. The instigating event may have occurred a galaxy or a millennium away. Even if he could limit his search to the concert, to his and Donna’s immediate vicinity, there’d been a host of people in that service corridor; he didn't know who they were and had no way of finding them. If the change in history had landed him on a planet in a different galaxy in the far future, who knew where any of those people had ended up? On the other hand, to restore the original timeline, he had to figure out where the two had branched, and that in itself might point him toward who had made the change. 

Puffing a heavy sigh, he hesitated to start on this project. Fiddling with time like this could be dangerous, and since there was no longer any Time Lord stricture that dictated which timeline was "right" and had to stand, he could, and probably should, leave well enough alone. However, something in the back of his mind kept whispering that this new reality wasn't what should be. And he really wanted his best mate back.

Propping his elbows on his knees, the Doctor leant heavily forward, his head hanging. _Donna, Donna, Donna_ , he chanted silently to himself, concentrating on holding the now-alternate timeline in place, trying to fix her memory in his mind. He shoved into a dark, shuttered corner his terror that he might lose the timeline and his best mate entirely. Sitting back against the bench, he dug in his pocket until he found a pen and scribbled her name in the palm of his hand. He then drew a rough sketch of her - luckily, this body had come with some artistic skill - and captioned it, "Come get me, Spaceman!" Dropping the pen back in his pocket, he then closed his eyes and concentrated again on the whole of their time together, starting back when he first met her, when she'd suddenly appeared in the TARDIS in her wedding dress due to the machinations of her fiancé and the Racnoss empress. But a stronger clearer memory of the event forced its way to the front: the face that appeared under the veil wasn't Donna's. The bride had been...

"OH!" The Doctor's eyes popped open, and he jumped up with a look of horror on his face, startling the woman who happened to be passing by just at that moment. "Excuse me. Sorry. Sorry!" Pushing past her, he dashed into the crowd, diving around anyone who got in his way as he sprinted for the TARDIS.


	3. Chapter 3

It was never easy to track a single person down through time, especially when the Doctor didn't even have a last name to work with. Luckily, with the TARDIS' help, he had found that in all this time, the bride hadn't strayed far from the home where he had dropped her after they'd fled the Thames Barrier. Still single, she'd gotten a new job - full-time, this time - and moved into a new flat, but it was all easy to trace.

Striding through the gleaming glass door of an accounting firm in the heart of London, the Doctor walked up to the reception counter and waited to be greeted, standing with his feet spread apart and his hands jammed in his pockets. The receptionist, in a smart business dress with her long blond hair twisted high into an immaculate bun, played a few more turns of the computer solitaire game that was clearly reflected in the mirrored company logo on the wall behind her, then slowly looked up with a bored sigh and began to recite. "Welcome to Anderson & Wilson. How can I -" The words died on her lips as she did a double-take, then sneered. "You!"

"Hallo, Nerys." He flashed her his most disarming smile. "How have you been?"

Nerys glanced around to see if anyone was watching, but the reception area was empty except for herself and the man across the desk from her. "What are you doing here?" she demanded.

"It's a pleasure to see you again, too."

She sprang to her feet and jabbed a finger at the office’s entrance. "Get out of here! You can't just come in here like this!"

An eyebrow arched. "Why not?"

She checked around again, then hissed, "You're an alien!"

His eyes wide, he stared down at himself, patting his chest and arms. "Am I?"

"What do you want?" she growled.

Turning back to her, he jammed his hands back in his pockets and tried that disarming smile again, though it hadn’t seemed to disarm anything the first time. "Why do I need to want anything? I was in the neighbourhood and thought I'd say hi."

Nerys was having none of it. "Shouldn't you be off somewhere, fighting robots and making people jump from speeding cars on the motorway?"

"Good ol' Nerys. I missed you."

Nerys slammed her fist on the desk. "Doctor, what do you want?"

Even the Doctor knew when to play it straight. Occasionally. "I need to ask you some questions. Something's gone wrong with time and I need to figure out what."

She blinked once, then rolled her eyes. "Look. I told you back then to sod off, and this is why. You make everything weird. Now go away." 

"Nerys, I really need your help,” he pleaded. “You're the only one who can sort this out."

She shook her head in disbelief. "Whatever it is, why would I have anything to do with it?"

"Because it's about Donna,” he explained without actually explaining anything. “Whatever's happened is centered on Donna."

"Donna?” she squeaked, appalled. “What's happened to her? Is she okay?"

"I don't know!"

Nerys ducked under the desk to grab her handbag. "Let me call her and -"

"No, no!” the Doctor, waving his hands to stop her. “She's fine like that. At least she should be just fine in this reality."

"What are you talking about, this reality?" she demanded as she peered up at him.

"That's what I need you to work out."

"Me?” Her voice cracked on her incredulity, and she sprang to her feet. “What can I do about reality?"

"Come on." He held out his hand to her, jerking his head toward the door. "I'll tell you everything in the TARDIS."

Nerys didn’t budge. "No! I’m working! You'll tell me right here!"

"But we don't have a second to lose!" he insisted.

"Re-ally?” she drawled. “You've got a time machine, Doctor! Does anything have to be urgent for you?"

"It doesn't work like that. I can't just -" His usual excuse of “crossing into established events” and whatnot foundered and died on his lips. He smacked his forehead. "Oh! Oh! You're right! There's plenty of time on this end. Haha!" He spun in exhilaration. "I'm always under pressure to get things right, I just assumed... All right, this can wait until you're off. When is that?" He looked around for a clock but the crisp, antiseptic walls of reception were bare except for a couple of framed canvasses spattered with paint passing themselves off as high art.

"Five o'clock. Now shift. I'm busy." She promptly sat down and turned to her computer, ignoring her visitor.

"The eight of clubs goes on the nine of hearts," the Doctor offered as he turned and headed for the door. He grinned at Nerys' sneer reflected in the polished glass.

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

It puzzled the Doctor how people could stand to live in a linear order, one minute to the next. It was so much better to skip all the boring minutes and move on to the interesting and exciting ones. Thus, he skipped the TARDIS ahead three hours and twenty-seven minutes, then trotted back to the office building that was home to Anderson and Wilson, arriving at precisely 4:50 p.m.; he certainly didn't want Nerys skiving off early to avoid him. He selected a spot out of the way with a clear view of the glass doors leading into the lobby and waited as patiently as he could, fidgeting and pacing back and forth. 

After fifteen minutes, the haughty blonde emerged from one of the lifts. Upon exiting the building, she spotted the Time Lord, hands in his trouser pockets, bouncing up and down on his red canvas-clad toes. It took her eight firm and deliberate steps to reach him and once there, she cocked her hands on her hips and sniffed. "I'd hoped that you’d been a hallucination."

"That's not the first time someone's said that to me."

"Come on. I don't have all day." She turned up her nose and crossed her arms to hide the fact that she’d glanced at her wrist despite not wearing a watch.

"I can make sure you have as much of the day as you want."

"Doctor..."

"Come on." Beckoning with a finger on each hand, he turned and trotted down the shallow steps to the pavement, glancing back to make sure that Nerys was following him. She was but ambled along at a leisurely pace and he had to double back and slow his long stride to stay with her.

"Tell me what this is all about," she finally inquired after a considerable silence. “What’s wrong with Donna?”

"I will, in the TARDIS. We can talk there." He offered her his arm, which she glanced at with disdain. She fixed her gaze straight in front her and proceeded at the same pace, just slow enough to annoy the hyperactive alien beside her.

When they reached the blue police box, Nerys inspected the gloss on her fingernails whilst the Doctor unlocked the door and held it open for her. He flashed her a proud grin as she strode past him into the craft. She walked up the ramp to the console and toed the grating with her shoe. "It's a good thing I'm wearing wedges today."

The Doctor's face fell, and he turned to latch the door. "Nothing impresses you, does it?"

"I've seen it all before, Doctor. And I'd hoped to never see it again, honestly."

"You've got to admit, she _is_ brilliant," he urged as he tossed his coat aside and swept up the ramp.

"Is this some kind of alien 'my TARDIS is bigger than your TARDIS' thing?"

"Oh, never mind." Pouting, he idly flipped a couple of toggles on the console. "I really need you to tell me what you know about Donna."

Nerys gaped as she tried to formulate a response. "You’re kidding, right?” she finally sputtered. “What I know about Donna? We've known each other since we were six years old. That would take days!" She huffed as she crossed her arms. "How do you even know her?"

The Doctor frowned before answering, "I met her at your wedding, of course."

"And now it's two years later and you're asking me about her. Why?"

"Because." He spun away, tearing at his hair. "Because I think someone has been manipulating her life, and I want to find out how and why."

"Manipulating her life?" Nerys mimicked incredulously.

"I don't know!” He continued to march around the console, batting at this control or that. “Maybe. So I need you to tell me all about Donna Noble, so I can figure out what went wrong."

"Donna Thomas."

The Doctor stopped on the spot and whirled. "What?"

"Donna Thomas,” she repeated. when that drew an even more confused stare from the Doctor, she sneered, “Married!"

"Donna got married?" he squeaked.

"Always been since you've known her. I don’t know where you heard the name Noble,” she sniffed.

The Doctor dismissed her complaint with a shake of his head. “When was that?”

“About two years before I met Lance. She and Sam are coming up on their fourth anniversary."

"Well, good for her," the Doctor murmured absently, scraping his hand over his mouth and jaw as he stared into space. It shouldn't have come as a surprise to him that Donna's life had changed so dramatically, but the realisation that the timeline had branched that long ago still came as a blindside. How far back would he have to search?

"Doctor? Doctor!"

"Yes? Oh." Broken out of his thoughts, he grinned at Nerys. "Sorry. I need to see this. Where can we find them?"

"You don't believe me,” she growled.

"Of course I do. If there's one thing you are, Nerys, it's brutally honest. But I need to see the effects of... Where do we go?" Darting to the console, he pulled the monitor in front of him and began flipping switches and typing at the keyboard.

"She still lives in Chiswick. They bought a house near the river. I've got the address here." She pulled the handbag from her shoulder to find her mobile.

"Here." The Doctor tilted the monitor, which displayed a satellite view of the area, so that she could see it. "This is Chiswick."

Nerys stepped over to look and frowned. “What’s that on your hand?” she asked, pointing at the lines of ink on the palm of the hand holding the monitor in place. 

The Doctor blanched and stuffed his hand in his pocket. “Nothing.” At Nerys’ sceptical eyeroll, he grinned with embarrassment. “Calculations. Diagrams. You know. Can never find a notepad when I need one. My mum always told me not to, said the ink was poisonous.” He shrugged. “Still here after, oh, thousands of pens’ worth.”

Nerys studied him for a moment, the corner of her mouth twitching, then turned to the map display. "Here. This house." She tapped the screen.

"Brilliant. Let me just input the coordinates..." He continued mumbling as he worked the TARDIS controls, whilst Nerys stood back and watched, pursing her lips.

"I knew this wasn't going to be just a talk. Here we go again." She glanced around and, spying the jumpseats, walked over and planted herself on one.

After holding on to the edge of the console to weather the initial jostle of launch, the Doctor leant against the railing, watching the time rotor rise and fall. _So Donna had already been married at Nerys' wedding..._ He wondered why he didn't know that. He ran through his memory of that day in this timeline and realised that he barely knew Donna at all. Nerys, too intent on picking up the pieces of her spoilt wedding, had not bothered to introduce him to anyone at the reception. Indeed, though he remembered seeing Donna there as Nerys' matron of honour, he only knew her name from their alternate history. He couldn't remember any other individuals there, as those few he knew from Donna’s life in Chiswick, such as her parents, hadn't attended Donna's friend's wedding.

He glanced sidelong at Nerys, who sat fuming with her eyes fixed on the hem of her skirt and ignoring anything that hinted that she was flying in a spaceship. Compared to her firm reality, Donna in the TARDIS was a dream, rapidly fading upon waking. _You shouldn’t be here either. Not ‘here’ here, but working that job, picking yourself up after Lance, living that life. Living Donna’s life. But you don’t know that, and I’ve got to keep it that way._ He tore his eyes away and studied the time rotor again. He needed to restore the original timeline, and he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted.


	4. Chapter 4

Nerys stepped out of the doors of the TARDIS into a narrow alley, stopping dead to assess where she was and wrinkle her nose at the muddy verge beneath the fence that hid the nearest house’s garden. Following close on her heels, the Doctor collided with her, eliciting an annoyed "Oi!" from his companion.

"Why'd you stop?" he asked as he grabbed her shoulders to steady her.

Nerys wriggled out of his grasp. "Get your hands off me! Did you have to choose such a dismal parking spot?"

Not sure what to do with his hands after her admonishment, he grabbed at the TARDIS’ door frame. "Didn't want to land in the street in front of the house, so we're down a couple from where you pointed, and this was the most convenient spot."

"Hmpf." She strode out to the sidewalk and made a show of scraping her wedges on the pavement to clean them off, even though there was nothing stuck to them. The Doctor strolled up next to her and gazed up and down the street, the tip of his tongue tracing his upper lip. 

“Come on, then.” Turning right, he strode off.

Nerys sighed heavily and crossed her arms. “Doctor. This way.”

“Right!” He spun on his heel and returned, passing her with his coat flaring behind him. This time he didn’t slow to wait for her, and she kept up as well as her heels would let her. By the time they reached the right terrace, he was a good ten metres ahead of her. He stopped on the sidewalk across the street from the Thomas’ house, surveying it whilst he waited for his companion.

“Posh area,” he commented as Nerys stalked up. “If that’s any indication, she's got a comfortable life.”

“Very. Sam’s been good for her.”

“Yeah?”

She looked up and down the street as she replied, mortified that she might be seen with this daft bloke in pinstripes and trainers. “Before they met, she was temping, this firm, that firm, living at home making just enough to help her mum pay the bills, but that was all. He gave her stability, really. He’s a banker, so she didn’t need to work. She went back to school and got her accountancy licence. She’s always had a good head for numbers.”

“Yeah, I know.” He followed her gaze, wondering what she was looking for.

“She works on contract for a few small firms, doing their books, cos it gives her some accomplishment, you know? But mostly she’s mum to Sarah.”

“Everything she ever wanted,” murmured the Doctor as he looked over the terrace house again. It was well-kept, the red brick clean and the trim freshly painted. Even the tiny patch of grass and bush in front of the house was trimmed and neat. 

“Yeah,” Nerys agreed. “Her fondest dreams, even when we were back in school.” She stared at the Doctor with a suspicious frown. “But how would you know that?”

“Oh! There she is!’ he exclaimed. The flash of ginger hair as the door opened was unmistakable, and Donna emerged carrying a tiny girl with a shock of curls that matched her mother’s. She fiddled with the lock on the door, then, securing her handbag on her shoulder, turned to walk out to the street. She stopped when she spotted the pair watching her from across the street and waved.

“Nerys! Why didn’t you tell me that you were coming by?” Donna called as she looked both ways down the road then crossed. The little girl cried out for her Auntie Nerys and twisted in her mother’s arms to beg to be held. “Can’t stay. We’re meeting Dad at the bank and heading for dinner, aren’t we?” She tickled her daughter’s stomach, eliciting delighted giggles.

“We just happened to be in the area,” Nerys explained rather unconvincingly as she took Sarah and planted a kiss on her cheek.

“I see that. Who’s your friend?” Nerys opened her mouth to answer, but Donna pointed at the Doctor, gaping in astonishment. “You’re that bloke, aren’t you? From the reception. That doctor bloke.”

Just that tiny bit of recognition from Donna warmed the Doctor’s hearts and he grinned like a schoolboy, plunging his hands in his pockets and leaning forward. “That’s me. I’m the Doctor.” It had been less than an hour since he’d last seen her in any timeline and yet he felt like he’d come home after centuries away. “Donna.”

“That’s my name. Don’t wear it out,” she quipped and turned to Nerys. “I didn’t know you two kept in touch.”

“We don’t,” Nerys declared, shooting a dark look at the Doctor. “He happened by at Anderson & Wilson.” She hurried on at Donna’s confused frown. “He mentioned he’d be coming out here so I thought I’d come out for a visit and catch up with him.”

“What a coincidence!” cooed Donna. “Meeting twice by chance like that. I’d say it’s destiny. You make such a lovely couple.” She laughed as the pair stared at each other with unmitigated disgust. “Oh, that settles it. Wedding bells next year, I’m sure of it. But I’ve got to dash. Already running late as it is. Call me, Nerys, okay?” And she was gone in a sweep of ginger. 

The Doctor stared after her as she bundled her daughter into a car down the street. Then, with a little wave back at her friends, Donna slipped into the driver’s seat, and in a moment, she roared off.

“You see, Doctor, perfectly happy,” Nerys insisted. “Now can I go home?”

“What?” His flat eyes found hers and slid into focus. “Oh! Yes. No! You can’t. This isn’t right.”

Nerys pursed her lips and crossed her arms. “It isn’t right that Donna is happy?”

“What? No, no, that’s good and all. But something’s still wrong here. I can feel it. Whatever it is, it happened while ago.” He stared at Nerys, though his thoughts were obviously elsewhere. “You said they married four years ago?”

“Little less. Do you ever remember anything past fifteen minutes?”

“I remember a lot of things for a long time,” he murmured as he raked his hand through his hair. “I really didn’t think she’d been married before, but I suppose.” His eyes snapped back to Nerys. “And they’ve been happy ever since? No rocky points, no big fights or anything.”

Nerys rolled her eyes. “Every marriage’s got its moments. How’m I supposed to know? Well, there was that one time, but that turned out to be nothing.”

He frowned. “What one time?”

“It wasn’t anything!” she insisted. “And I am not letting you nose into Donna’s personal life! I’m done with you. I brought you here so you can see nothing’s wrong, and I’m done. Go find someone else to bother.”

“Nerys,” he whinged, sounding very much like her four-year-old nephew begging for a new toy, “you’ve got to help me. Something is definitely wrong. Someone’s been changing Donna’s life and I’ve got to put it back.”

“That’s bollocks, that is, ‘changing Donna’s life’.” She planted her fists on her hips. “What are you really after?”

“I’m not after anything. I’m just trying to help. Come on, Nerys, you know you can trust me. I really need your help.”

Nerys didn’t believe a word of it. Crossing her arms, she scowled at the Doctor. “Can I go now?”

“Please.” The single word was quiet, sober, and heartfelt. His reversal of attitude took Nerys by surprise, and her jaw dropped open. “This is important to me. Please tell me about the event that you thought of.”

Nerys searched his face for a moment. He might be alien, but everything that came to mind was written there plainly for anyone to see. She didn’t believe anything was wrong, and she had no idea why the Doctor was trying to interfere with her best mate, but she could tell that _he_ believed there was danger and he was worried.

“All right,” she sighed. “It was about a year after they got married. Donna was about halfway through her certification and she’d just had Sarah. It was a hard time for her, so Sam took her out to relax. They were doing the London thing: you know, the royals and shopping and such. She mentioned to Sam how she was looking forward to raising Sarah after she was done with school, and Sam blew up. He thought he was putting her through school for nothing, that she wanted to just stay at home and have babies, and it just kind of escalated from there. She walked out on him, and she stayed in my flat for a week, baby and all. They almost called it quits there, and if Donna’s mum hadn’t stepped in, that would have been it.”

The Doctor stared at her, and he choked a few times before he finally gasped out, “Sylvia? She stepped in?”

“Yeah.” Nerys’ cynical smile didn’t mask the sparkle of respect in her eyes. “You’d never think that, would you, but she only ever wanted the best for Donna. And when they started having problems, she saw it right off and stepped right in. Turns out, she’s a brilliant mediator.” With a sudden frown, she whirled on the Doctor. “How do you know Sylvia?”

“Never mind that.” Waving dismissively, the Doctor paced off. “That sounds like the right kind of event. A big fight that could have gone so differently. That’s exactly the kind of thing I’d target.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. Why would anyone want to change Donna’s life? Why her in specific?”

“No.” Nerys strode up and poked the Doctor in the swirly brown tie. “I’ve shown you what you wanted, just like you asked. Now it’s my turn. You tell me, what is this all about? What’s happening to Donna?”

The Doctor stared at the angry woman for a full five seconds, the tip of his tongue tracing the edge of his teeth. “All right. Yes. All right,” he finally agreed, his head bobbing up and down as his determination grew. “You’re right. You need to know. Someone’s been messing with Donna’s life, changing it. We’ve got to put it back and stop whoever it is from doing it again.”

“How do you know that?” she asked. “I mean, I’m Donna’s best mate and nothing’s out of the ordinary.”

“Oh, you’re only human, so you can’t see it,” he explained airily, completely missing Nerys’ insulted glare. “To you, it’s always been this way. But you know I’m a Time Lord, Nerys. I can see that things are wrong. I just don’t know when they changed.”

Nerys bit her lip. This all sounded like a load of tosh, but she had to remember, the Doctor was clearly worried that something bad was going to happen to Donna. She wasn’t going to let that happen - or let the Doctor meddle in Donna’s life. “But you think it’s some big event, like Donna’s fight with Sam.” 

“Yes. You said they almost broke up at that point. That’s important.” Squaring himself in front of her, he took her hands and bowed his head. “Will you help me, Nerys? Will you help me set things right for Donna?”

“She’s my best mate,” she declared with a proud toss of her head. “Of course I’ll help - but I’m helping her, not you.”

“You don’t trust me.”

Nerys drew herself up and stared him in the eye. “You’re telling me that something’s changed in Donna’s life and I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about, but I’m here. And you think I don’t trust you.”

The Doctor smiled. “Good.”

“No, Doctor, I don’t trust you. Not a jot.” His face fell. “But I saw the beginning of the Earth with you. If you say that something strange is going on, I can believe it, at least for the moment, and I’m not letting Donna hang out to dry.”


	5. Chapter 5

Trafalgar Square in summer was exactly as Nerys always remembered it: blinding sun blazing off the white concrete, packed with tourists wandering the plaza and lounging on the steps in front of the National Gallery and on every inch of the fountains’ edges and the column’s pedestals. She’d never seen the draw of the place, noisy and crowded, with no comfort and nothing to do. Her contempt for the whole area was not ameliorated by either her current companion or her aching feet, still trapped in the wedges she’d worn to work. If she had to be in the city in summer, it’d be for some shopping and lunch at a cosy cafe, not for bustling crowds and chasing after an over-caffeinated ferret of a man.

The moment they’d entered the square proper, she stopped and waited for the Doctor to realise she wasn’t keeping up and circle back to her. “Come on,” he coaxed. “Where’re they going to be?”

“How should I know?” she demanded. “I wasn’t here for this.”

“You’ve got to know something,” he replied. “Donna must have told you what happened. Think back to when she was staying with you.”

With a frustrated sneer, Nerys crossed her arms and shrugged, shaking her head at the futility of it all. “All I know is that they fought in the square. I’ve no idea what part.” Then it occurred to her. “Wait. Donna did say they’d been to Buckingham Palace. So they had to have come from that direction.” She pointed south toward the Mall.

“Oh, that’s brilliant, yes,” the Doctor crooned, nodding to encourage her.

“That’s all I know. They got here and argued, and Donna came to my flat directly. So she would have gone to Charing Cross.” She glanced around to get her bearings, then pointed east toward the river. “Or maybe Leicester Square, if they’d got past the gallery.”

The Doctor nodded as he assessed possible routes toward both Tube stations. “So we have arrival and departure. But what about in-between? We don’t know how long they were here, or if they went somewhere else and came back.” He looked around. “What about the gallery itself?”

Nerys snorted. “Donna in an art museum? Seriously?”

“I suppose not.”

“Them coming here at all is unusual.” She thumbed over her shoulder. “More like they were passing through on their way to Soho.”

“Oh, that’s good. That gives us a probable path: the zebra crossing here, past Nelson on the left, between the fountains, then up toward St. Martin’s.” He pointed out the path as he talked. “Okay. They’re not likely to see you in this crowd, but let’s get you out of the way anyway. What about behind that fountain there? Place for you to sit, and it’ll be hard for them to spot you.”

“I won’t see much of anything either,” she pointed out.

“The spying’s my job, since they won’t know me from Adam.”

She licked her lips then hooked her hand on the strap of her handbag to pull it closer. “Then if it’s all the same to you, there’s a pub just up over there. That’s where I’ll be.”

“You don’t want to see the argument?” 

“Hunger’s my thing. You kidnapped me from my dinner.”

“Oh!” the Doctor exclaimed. “I didn’t realise. I’m sorry.”

“Somehow I doubt it.” Without another word, she turned and stalked off.

A fond smile brightening his eyes, the Doctor watched her retreat until she was lost in the crowd, then turned and took a good look at Trafalgar Square. Given Nerys’ information, Donna and her husband were likely to enter from the direction of St. James’ Park and cross diagonally toward St.-Martin’s-in-the-Field to head toward Soho. From what he understood, the bulk of the argument had occurred within the square, so he truly had nothing else to do but wait and watch for their approach.

As he took stock of the area, he realised that with the sheer number of people moving through the square, he’d have to keep a sharp lookout for his quarry. Even attempting to stand in one place was near impossible, as a large tour group, led by a harried-looking woman carrying a small megaphone and a colourful stuffed octopus mounted high up on a staff, oozed past him, pushing him back against the bollard behind him. Moving with currents of the crowd to patrol the southern edge of the square seemed the best plan, and he hoped that Donna’s striking copper hair would serve as an adequate beacon.

To Nerys’ credit of remembering events years in the past for her, Donna appeared on the traffic island south of the square, her arm hooked on her companion’s elbow, about twenty minutes into the Doctor’s vigil. The Doctor took the opportunity to appraise the man who had become Donna’s husband. Sam was about as different from himself as a human could get. A handful of centimetres taller than Donna, he was stocky and strong, exactly the build that Donna had so often professed to like as she derided the long streak of alien nothing. His bespoke jacket over a crisp silk shirt and closely cropped blond hair matched his shrewd, serious countenance. His eyes, however, were only for the woman on his arm.

The changes in Donna were starkly apparent as she stood with her husband, and the Doctor wondered how he hadn’t noticed them earlier, when he’d seen her with her daughter in Chiswick. Her blouse-and-trousers ensemble were practical for touring and shopping, much like the clothing she would select for visiting alien planets, but these were of higher quality and conservative style. This Donna eschewed the large, sometimes gaudy fashion jewelry that the Doctor’s Donna favoured, instead wearing smaller, elegant pieces that the Doctor identified as made of genuine gold and gemstones. 

The couple were earnestly discussing something, and though Donna was as animated and ebullient as ever, the Doctor could not hear them over the crowd and the traffic, so strode to the edge of the pavement to better hear them as they crossed.

“‘Course I want to go there!” she was saying. She hugged Sam’s arm. “You always remember my favourite, don’t you? But we’re just going to look. Not buying anything.”

Sam peered at her, his eyebrows knitted with worry. “You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?”

“Well yeah. You’ve seen, Mum’s been over every day this week to help with Sarah when I’m at school, and she always stays to help you when you get home so I can study.” She paused for a moment as they gained the pavement and stepped past the man in the brown duster standing near the crossing light, who watched them out of the corner of his eye. “And now, today all day so we could come out. She’s practically living with us! She needs her own space. It wouldn’t take much to convert your office. A bed and maybe a telly, so she has some place to relax and she doesn’t feel like she has to rush home.”

“That’s my office, Donna,” he grumped.

“Just be for a year, ‘til I graduate. And it’s not like you won’t be able to use it as well.”

The Doctor sauntered behind them, staying close enough to hear them, but keeping enough of a distance to not seem suspicious.

“Well, I don’t like losing my office, but we’ll talk about it.” Sam stopped suddenly and pulled Donna to him, and the Doctor kept walking, strolling past them to gaze at one of Nelson’s lions. “But you’ve got to stop thinking about that and enjoy yourself today! You’ve been working too hard, and that’s why we’re here, to give you a break from everything. You’re getting something at Grace’s.”

Those were the last clear words the Doctor heard. When he realised he had lost their conversation in the general noise, he turned to find them again and saw over the head of the woman who had come up behind him that they were passing between the fountains as he’d predicted. However, instead of heading east toward the church, they turned north, toward the steps that led to the plaza in front of the National Gallery. Donna walked next to her husband, no longer clinging to his arm.

“Pardon me,” the Doctor mumbled to the woman and, sidestepping her, jogged after them, finally getting within hearing distance when they started climbing the steps.

Sam threw up his hands in frustration. “All right, then, how about a new dress? I know you’ve wanted one for Reesa Simmons’ engagement party.”

“I’m not going to the party,” Donna stated plainly.

“What? Why not?”

“Got exams the next day early. Reesa doesn’t want me there anyway. She hates being reminded that I got you.” Catching his arm, she pulled him close and pecked him on the cheek. “Besides, I’d rather use that money for that bed.”

Sam laughed, more in exasperation than for humour. “Donna, love, we can afford both, and we can especially afford to get you a treat.”

“Oh, look! Chalk art!” she exclaimed, detaching herself from her husband’s arm and trotting off to view the work of one of the artists drawing on the pavement. Sam rolled his eyes at her transparent attempt to escape a discussion she didn’t want to have, then shook his head and trotted after her.

The Doctor strolled leisurely behind them and sidled up next to Donna, pretending to be entranced by watching the artist work.

“Oh, that’s simply gorgeous? Don’t you think, Sam?” Donna gushed as she gazed at the picture. 

“Beautiful,” he agreed, though he was barely interested.

The artist smiled up at Donna. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Fishing a couple of coins from her pocket, Donna dropped them in the tip jar, then began fiddling with her phone. “May I?” she asked, indicating her intention to snap a photo with a thrust of her chin. The artist nodded her assent and Donna began walking around the artwork to find a good angle. Once she got her photos, she rejoined Sam and stood back with him to watch.

“If setting up that room is that important to you, Donna, then let’s do it,” Sam pronounced. 

“It really is,” she confirmed with a relieved smile. “Mum’s been such a help, and it pays to stay on her good side. Now that she’s finally off my back, what with getting married and going to school, I’d like to keep it that way.”

“I bet you would,” said Sam, laughing. “I can share my office to help keep the peace.”

“As I said, it’ll only be for a year.” Donna stared down at the artwork and sniffed sadly. “I’ve been a horrible mum to Sarah, letting Mum have the rearing of her whilst I’m at school. I keep telling myself, just one more year and it’ll be done and I can be a real mum to my little girl.”

“How do you figure that?” asked Sam. “You’d have your evenings back, I’d say, but we’d still need your mum during the day. Or we could get a nanny.”

“I’m not leaving the raising of my daughter to anyone else,” Donna declared, “even my mum.”

“You’ll have to when you’re working full-time.”

“I said, I’m not leaving my daughter to someone else.” The artist looked at her, eyes wide with apprehension of the argument brewing in front of her. Her audience, including the Doctor, joined her, concerned. Donna noticed the eyes on her and hissed a curt, “Come on!” to Sam. The couple strode off to a respectable distance and leant in close to exchange words without noticing the man in the brown coat sauntering just a tad closer.

“I’ve been putting you through school all this time for what?” Sam demanded. “Just so you have a pretty certificate to hang on the wall of the nursery?”

“‘Course not!” protested Donna. “I’ve been working hard for this, so that I could have what you called ‘a respectable job’.”

“Oh, don’t put this on me. You’re the one who asked to go back to school, and I’ve done nothing but encourage you to pursue what you want. And now you want to throw all that time and money away and stay at home.”

“This is our daughter we’re talking about here!”

“I’m talking about our marriage. Our partnership!”

Donna stormed off and Sam strode after her. The Doctor took a step to follow and faltered as a wave of vertigo washed over him and he stumbled, clenching his fists to force the dizziness out and keep himself conscious and alert. The world receded as his vision greyed, and he swayed on his feet. Then, everything snapped back into place. 

Still disorientated, he gazed around, looking for the familiar flash of bright red hair but finding only the bobbing octopus of the tour guide as her group milled around him. He took a gulp of fresh air and looked again and spotted the couple, down the steps and heading back the way they had come; his vertigo must have lasted longer than he had thought. Donna snarled at her husband, her face twisted with resentment and they paused to snipe at each other again. Her hand twitched, ready to lash out to catch Sam with a sharp palm to the cheek, but she thought better of it and launched into another tirade, getting up close into his face. The Doctor tried to extricate himself from the crowd, pushing between tourists gazing up at the exhibition signs plastered across the entrance to the National Gallery or out over Nelson’s domain, but by the time he pulled himself free, Donna and Sam had marched off and were nowhere to be seen.


	6. Chapter 6

Nerys didn’t bother to sit down at her table before taking her first big gulp of her pint. The moment it had appeared on the bar before her, she’d grabbed it and downed half. She didn’t care that the bartender eyed her suspiciously: she might look like a lightweight drinking way too much before noon, but this was a special - no, bizarre - occasion and she needed it. Besides, for her, it was easily past six in the evening, and the meal she’d ordered here was her dinner, not her lunch.

She settled into one of the large, cushy armchairs by a small table next to the window and stared out at the pedestrians passing by, crossing and uncrossing her legs as she tried to find any position that might relieve her apprehension. Everything about her current situation felt wrong. It wasn’t just the time travel, though that was disturbing enough. The thought that she herself was out there, just five miles to the west, was enough to sour her drink, and she dropped the glass none too gently on the table. At least she remembered what she’d been doing on this day well enough to reassure herself that there was no chance she’d accidentally run into herself: she’d spent the day trapped in her idiot brother’s house, babysitting his three brats as he and his wife fixed the fence he’d crashed into driving home from the pub the night before. Donna’s distraught phone call after the argument that was about to happen had given her the excuse she’d needed to escape.

No, the wrongness she sensed was the Doctor. Part of it was that he’d waltzed back into her life at all. With that regrettable business with Lance and the alien spider - and what kind of carnivorous arachnid laughed at puns, of all things? - she’d hoped never to see the man again after he’d dropped her off at her flat in her soaked, ruined wedding dress. _Too pleased with himself by half, that one. Nerve of him to ask me to go with him. Bet he does that to all the women. Flash a smile and say, “Time machine,” and they’re falling over themselves to go with him, I’m sure._ Leaning forward, she grabbed her glass again and toyed with it as she stared out the window. _Won’t work on me, Doctor. I’m not a fool._

The crux of the problem, however, was that she knew he hadn’t told her everything. If there was one thing she was good at, it was sensing deceit. Donna often mocked her cynicism, saying she’d accuse the Pope of lying if she got the chance, but it was simply healthy scepticism. The one time she’d ignored her instinct, she’d ended up trussed up in a spider web over a hole leading to the center of the Earth. Lance taught her to never ignore her inner voice, especially when it came to men.

“Bangers and mash, extra gravy.” 

Nerys caught the waiter’s accusatory glance as he placed the loaded plate in front of her, and she gave him a sultry wiggle as she sneered back at him. _Judge all you want. This figure doesn’t come easy, but I’ve had it with salads and diet pop today._

She mused over this bewildering day as she ate her dinner, trying to sort out everything the Doctor had said to find the holes and figure out what he was really after. It simply didn’t make sense that he’d be concerned about Donna. He’d met her briefly at Nerys’ wedding reception over a year previously and hadn’t shown her the slightest interest then, so little that he hadn’t even known she was married. What was it about her that would attract the attention of an alien time traveller?

Once the sausages were gone, Nerys toyed with the remaining potatoes, making patterns with her fork until the uncanny resemblance to that scene from that American alien visitation film made her shiver. She threw down the fork and retreated into the shadow of her chair, arms crossed in pique. The Doctor cared too much about Donna, had something more than mere interest in her, and he didn’t want Nerys to know. That should be reason enough to demand to be taken home.

She forgot that decision a moment later as she glanced out the window and saw the Doctor dragging himself down the pavement toward the pub, pale and shaken. She sprang to her feet then fell back in her chair, staring at him impotently. Though she’d known him for less than a day, she sensed that physical distress was rare for him and meant something bad had happened. _What’d he see?_ Nerys wondered as she pressed a hand over her mouth. _Couldn’t have just been the argument to affect him this bad. What happened?_

She composed herself whilst the Doctor entered the pub, and by the time he dropped uninvited into the armchair across from her, she appeared tolerably bored. “About time you got back,” she snapped. “Can I go home now?”

Slumping in his chair, the Doctor mopped at his brow and peered at Nerys from under his palm. His eyes twinkled, and Nerys knew he hadn’t fallen for her front of apathy.

“All right,” she sighed. “What happened out there?”

“Something changed again,” he grunted, his voice hoarse. “Something about Donna changed.”

“How do you know?”

“I felt it. Dizzy spell hit me, right in the middle of their argument, bam.” He clicked his fingers. 

“I didn’t notice anything.”

“You wouldn’t. Humans aren’t time-sensitive.”

“Whatever that means.”

“Thing is,” he groaned, “I can’t figure out what changed. You’re here, I’m here, and Donna and Sam were still snapping at each other. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe nothing did change. Maybe you’re coming down with Time Lord flu or some alien virus from planet Gargaron.” _That would be a blessing_ , she thought. _Then he could take me home and I’d be done with him forever._

“Nah,” the Doctor snorted as he pinched at the bridge of his nose, and Nerys deflated, sinking into her chair. “Gargaron’s quite safe. Temperate and non-threatening, with just a bit of a breeze in the summer. And fire ferns with quite the pollen sacs. Stay away if you’ve allergies. But no viruses. Besides,” and he wagged a finger at Nerys, “I’ve experienced this kind of temporal disjunction before. We used to work with these kinds of anomalies back at the Academy, during our practicals.”

Nerys waited not-so-patiently whilst the man rambled, staring daggers at him. “If you’re such the expert, then you must know what’s causing it.”

“Not at all,” he replied, waving away the suggestion. “It’s like getting a bucket of water dumped on you whilst you’re blindfolded. You know what just happened, but not who did it or why, or even how.”

‘All right.” She grabbed her beer and took a big swallow, then slid the glass back onto the table. “So you’re sure something changed, but nothing did.”

“That’s the thing. It doesn’t make sense. I mean, this is the third one so far today. Well, ‘today’ for me anyway. Not in the cosmic sense. Today’s not the day that I came to see you, or even the day that, well, when this all started.” Nerys snatched the beer back up and downed the rest of it, fuming at the Doctor over the rim of the glass. “Oh. Right. Well. So there’s been three now. The first one was tiny, and I couldn’t figure out what had changed then either. The second knocked me flat on my back, and when I woke up, Donna was gone and I was on a different planet altogether. This one was in the middle. I’d say it wasn’t large enough for a huge change but I should have been able to see it.”

“Wait.” Setting the glass on the table with a pointed _thunk_ , Nerys glared at him over her forgotten dinner and hissed, “What did you say?”

“This should have been big enough to see some effect.”

“No, before that.” She tapped on the table. “You said that after the big… the big… _thing_ , Donna was gone. You were with Donna!” she accused him. “You were with her and you don’t even know her.”

The Doctor couldn’t quite bring himself to look at Nerys. He scrubbed at the back of his neck with one hand. “Well…”

“You _do_ know her, don’t you?” She peered at him, eyes narrowed, then gaped. “Or you did, until all of this changed.” Realisation dawned on her face, and lashing out with a quick hand, she snatched the Doctor’s wrist and forced his fingers open. The drawing of Donna, calling for rescue, stared up at her. “You lied to me! You do know her!”

The Doctor’s guilty grimace told her she’d hit it spot on. 

“You know her far better than meeting her at my wedding, don’t you?” she continued, working through all her questions out loud. “But you didn’t know she was married, and that thing you just said, Donna was gone and you were on a different planet, that means everything was completely different for you. Which means… which means…”

Suddenly it all made sense. 

“It all happened to her, didn’t it?” She hadn’t thought that that pasty-faced alien could turn any paler, but he managed it. “ _She_ was the bride that that spider bint wanted, not me. Then, she went with you when you asked. And now it’s all changed, and you want to put it back.”

“No! That’s not it at all!” the Doctor protested, but Nerys was buying none of it.

“You told me you were trying to fix some changes in Donna’s life, but really, you want to change everything about it. You’re trying to take away her family and her career, her entire life. And…” Her eyes widened as the implication hit her. “That means you want to change everything! You want to throw out my life and everyone else’s!” Horrified, she collapsed back in her chair, her shoulders slumped and her arms hanging.

“That wasn’t the point!” the Doctor insisted, propping his elbows on his knees to lean in and argue his case. “Time snapped and everything changed! This isn’t how things are supposed to be. I’m trying to put it all back.”

“How it’s supposed to be? Who are you to decide how it’s supposed to be?”

“I’m a Time Lord. That’s what we do. I can see all that, and…” He faltered. Whilst he tried to defend himself, he’d glanced at the timelines and it hit him: there was nothing weighting the original timeline more than the present one. There were no fixed points to defend, no momentous events. Sure, he’d seen patterns forming around Donna from the moment she’d been drawn into the TARDIS and they had continued to solidify as she had travelled with him, but now the threads of time swirled elsewhere. Not around Nerys or this timeline’s Donna or anyone else he’d met since, he noted, and they weren’t looping back toward Martha or Rose, so it must be someone he hadn’t yet met. One thing was clear, however: the universe cared not which way this went; whatever happened, it was compensating.

“What, Doctor?” sneered Nerys. “Conscience catching up with you? Or is it too hard to come up with more holier-than-thou lies?”

“No.” Nerys reared back at the confusion in his suddenly soft voice. “You’re right, you know.”

“Oh, geroff!” she snorted.

“No, I mean it.” Sighing, he mopped at his face with both hands, acutely aware of just how exhausted he suddenly was. “I’ve just been running on adrenaline, since the moment I woke up in this reality. All I’ve been trying to do is get my best mate back.”

“Your best mate?” squeaked Nerys. “Donna?”

“Yeah. You were right about that, too. In rea- in the original timeline,” he corrected himself with a shake of his head, “Donna was the one marrying Lance. After all that, I asked her to travel with me and she said no, just like you did, but we met up again and we’ve been together since.” He stuttered at the twitch of Nerys’ disbelieving eyebrow. “No, no, not ‘together’ together. Just together. Just mates out to see the universe.”

“That’s what you’re trying to get back?”

“Yes,” he sighed, wearier than he’d been in centuries.

“And what happens to us, then?” she hissed. “We just disappear?”

“No, not disappear. This timeline gets replaced,” he hastened to clarify. “Yes, you as you are now won’t be there, but you’re still there. I know you are, Nerys. I met you at Donna’s wedding.”

“And what am I like, then, in that world?”

“Well,” the Doctor drawled as he gazed up at the rafters above them, his head bobbing as he thought. “You’re Donna’s friend, and you looked lovely at the reception, and…” He groped for anything he could remember about the original Nerys he’d met. “And you got along great with Lance. You were dancing with him, though I suppose that isn’t a great recommendation.”

Nerys barked a sardonic laugh. “You don’t know.”

The Doctor had nothing he could say.

She threw her hands up in helpless derision. “You really don’t know. You only just saw me, I bet, never even talked to me. You never talked to Donna at my wedding, so why would you talk to me at hers? How can you do this, Doctor? How can you just throw away my life like this? All of our lives?”

“Nerys -”

“I don’t know why I trusted you,” she shouted over him. “You’re no better than Lance. At least he had a good reason to kill me, bonkers though he was.”

“I’m not killing you, Nerys. You’re not going to die -”

“You just want Donna back and you don’t care what happens to the rest of us.”

“I do care what happens to you! It’s just that…” He faltered again, and ran a hand through his fringe as he weighed what he should say.

“What, Doctor?” she growled. “What can you possibly say to make me think you care at all?”

The Doctor’s head snapped up, and Nerys jerked back at the storm in his eyes. “All right. Look. Putting aside all of that with you and Donna, even if I don’t change anything one way or the other, someone is still messing with Donna’s life. They’ve changed it so radically that everything’s different, not just Donna but everyone, going years past, and they’ve gone and done it again. Is it better? Is it worse? I’ve no idea. But whoever did it, I’ve got to stop them.”

“You think they’re still doing it.”

The Doctor nodded emphatically as he blurted, “I know they are. That’s what I felt out there, an unnatural shift in time.”

“But nothing changed,” Nerys insisted.

The Doctor held up a finger. “Correction: nothing _seemed_ to change. Doesn’t mean there hasn’t been a change that we haven’t noticed yet.”

Nerys held on to her last shred of hope. “But this change, it could have been good, right? It didn’t have to be a bad thing.”

“Whether it was good or bad doesn’t matter. It could have been anything, but whatever it is, it’s wrong, and the more it happens, the less likely I’ll be able to stop it. You see, Nerys, you know I’m a Time Lord, right?” He tapped his temple. “I’m doing everything I can to keep these alternatives alive, and I can do that, I have that power. I can hold the fragmenting timelines in place, but every time a new one branches off, the oldest one gets fainter and harder to grasp. Donna was my companion, and then everything changed and you became the bride. Now something else has changed and Donna’s receding into the distance. I’m starting to forget her. You see?” He held his hand out to her, showing her the drawing of Donna. “I drew this when I first arrived in this timeline, and it’s only here because I’m holding onto it as hard as I can. It’s not two hours old and it’s already starting to fade. I don’t know how many more changes Donna’s timeline can take, but I know that eventually, I’ll lose the timeline and it’ll be gone, and then the next one, and then the next one. Eventually, even this timeline, the one we’re in right now, is going to go. Donna’s existence, and everything else, is crumbling. I need to stop these changes now, and I need your help to do it.”

“I don’t care!” she snapped, leaning across the table and and stabbing it with a finger “None of that tosh matters to me. All I know is that you’re trying to destroy my world, and I’m not helping you do that.”

“I’m not destroying it,” repeated the Doctor with a heavy sigh. “I’m just changing it back to the way it was. You won’t even notice.”

“And you think that makes it right?” she demanded, her furious voice going shrill.

“No.” The Doctor swiped a hand across his eyes, then sighed. “All right, Nerys. I’ll tell you what. Stopping these time shifts, that’s the most important thing right now. If you’ll help me, I promise that I will make no decisions about what should be restored until after we’ve stopped them and I’ve discussed it all with you. We’ll figure it out together, and I’ll give you fair consideration.”

“Fair?” she spat at him. “There’s nothing fair about this! Look me in the eye and tell me there’s even a chance that you’ll leave things the way they are!” Biting his lip, the Doctor glanced away, unable to meet Nerys’ glare. “I thought so. You’re just going to do whatever you want, and that’s going to be putting it all back the way it was. It doesn’t matter that you’ll be wiping my life out, and so many other people’s. And you’ll be destroying Donna’s happiness as well, because if she was marrying Lance and temping at H.C. Clements like I was, then she was living my wreck of a life and she didn’t have Sam and her children and a career.”

The Doctor drew in a breath to protest, then choked on it as what Nerys had said sunk in. “Wait. Children?”

“Yes!” she barked, exasperated. “Children! You saw them!”

“No, there was -” The Doctor sputtered again, stood stunned for a moment, then pumped his fist. “Yes!” he exclaimed, and Nerys reared back, startled. “That was the change. Two children!” The image of Donna emerging from her house carrying her tiny son whilst clutching the hand of her daughter next to her flashed through his mind, brighter than the alternate memory of her with Sarah alone. “Matthew! Matthew and Sarah.” As he grinned at the confused woman, his memories of the last two hours gelled around that moment, some of them deviating significantly from the older, fainter recollection. 

“Of course, Matthew and Sarah,” she growled in fair mimicry of the Doctor’s gravelly tenor. “What are you talking about?”

“When we went to see Donna, she only had one child, her daughter Sarah,” he explained. “The event in the square, it changed it to two children.”

Nerys rolled her eyes to the ceiling and shook her head. “Oh, that’s nonsense.”

“I’m telling you, that’s what happened. Here, Nerys,” he beckoned, waving to get her attention, “tell me, what happened after they left Trafalgar Square? How did their argument end?”

“I told you that, just before we went there!”

“Humour me.”

“All right.” She sighed and began in a bored, pedantic tone,” They were in the square, I don’t know why, and Sam got mad cos he thought Donna wasn’t planning on working after all her schooling. They argued most of the day, but they managed to work things out and settled some things.”

“Donna didn’t go to your flat and stay there for a week?” the Doctor asked.

“No!” she spat. “Good thing, too, cos I was at my brother’s looking after his brats whilst he mended his fence. Ended up staying there all day and overnight.”

“And Sylvia didn’t mediate for them?” he prompted her once more.

“No, why would she?”

“Don’t you see, Nerys? That’s not what you told me, not originally.” He pointed out toward Trafalgar. “You told me that Donna left the square alone and stayed with you for a bit, and they almost divorced until they made up with Sylvia’s help.”

“I did not!” she protested. “That’s not how it went at all.”

“To you, no, it didn’t. You’re only human -”

“Oi!”

“- so you only know what happened as a result of the change. To you, that argument was significant but ended well, but you thought it was important, and to you, it’s the reason we’re here now.” He tapped his head. “But me, I can see and remember both timelines, and to me, we came here because the argument almost ended in divorce and you insisted it was the most important event in their marriage up until now.” He paused. “Well,” he drawled, “your ‘now’, not this ‘now’. But, the point is, in your memory, the argument went well and seems to have ended in conceiving their son, and you don’t know about the one in which it nearly ended in divorce and left them with only a daughter.”

“Only a daughter? You’re saying that Matthew didn’t exist? And you’re saying that I said this?” Nerys’ eyes grew wide, and she puffed a heavy breath into her cupped hands as she tried to grasp what he was saying. “But Donna… She has two children, I’m sure of it.”

“Yes, that’s right. To you, right here, right now - oh, English needs a precise temporal lexicon!” He threw his hands up, then took a deep breath and tried again. “To you, she has two children, but in the other timeline, she had only one. And in the original, she didn’t have her own family at all. Wasn’t even married. She was travelling with me. Never once mentioned anyone named Sam.” The Doctor reached across the table and took Nerys’ hand to steady her. She cringed at his touch. His words were soft and measured when he spoke again. “Donna’s timeline is branching, fragmenting into a myriad of possibilities. It’ll keep changing, and it’ll change everything around it, and who knows what any of this will end up like. That’s what I have to stop, and I need you to help me. Please, Nerys.”

Nerys pulled her hand out of his grasp and sat back, straightening the shoulders of her dress. “All right. I’ll help. But like I said before, I’m doing this for her. Not for you.”

“No, not for me at all.” He glanced down at the drawing in the palm of his hand. “For Donna.”

She mopped at her face with the back of her hand, not at all to stifle a sniffle. “What do we do now?”

“I’m not sure. The goal is to find who’s doing this to her, so I suppose we need to figure out where in Donna’s life he’s going to strike next.” He shook his head as he thought. “But it could be anywhere. It doesn’t need to be a big decision point like Trafalgar Square was. After all, the first was just a concert, and we still haven’t pinpointed what previous point in time it actually changed. Besides, even the tiniest, most insignificant change could have enormous consequences. Donna could decide to have a coffee instead of tea one morning, leading to leaving a bit of liquid in her cup, which spills on her boss’ skirt and destroys her promotion chances for a year.”

Nerys stared at him, her lip curling in undisguised contempt.

“All right. Yes. All right. That doesn’t help,” he conceded. “We can’t just visit every moment of Donna’s life. You’re the Donna expert. When do you think we should go?” He eyed Nerys expectantly.

She settled back in her chair and crossed her arms. “I’d say I’m not the person to ask.”

“Why not?”

“Cos you and whoever’s doing this have one thing in common: you don’t know a thing about Donna, not a whit, do you now?” Ducking his head, the Doctor scratched at the back of his neck with a sheepish grimace. Nerys pushed her point. “That’s right. You were surprised when I said she was married cos you hadn’t a clue if your Donna might have been previously married. You know where she lived, I’m sure, but what about where she worked before you met her?”

A memory of a rooftop conversation overlooking London proper flashed through the Doctor’s mind. “Er, she said something about double glazing.”

“Yeah? Which firm? I’m sure there are a couple dozen in West London alone. How about the schools she attended? Did you know she grew up in Croydon? Or am I lying?” She snorted at his deer-in-the-headlights goggle. “I didn’t think so.”

“Yes, yes,” the Doctor moaned. “You’re right, of course. I don’t know much, and our mysterious adversary probably knows the same. So he’d choose an important, visible event, because -”

“Cos why spend the time and effort researching an obscure moment in Donna’s life when any will do?” she finished for him.

“Yes!” the Doctor exclaimed, startling Nerys into knocking over her glass, and she barely caught it from tumbling off the table. “It’s got to be public so it’s easy for a stranger to get in without being noticed. And it’s got to be significant enough that an outsider can find out about it and know when it’ll happen.”

“No, that’s not right. This here,” and Nerys waved a hand out at the square, “it wasn’t significant at all.”

“Not to you, because you just remember them arguing and making up. In the previous timeline, when they were here, it was a huge fight and they separated and almost divorced. That’s a big, visible event.”

“I just can’t imagine…” Nerys murmured, then shook her head. “All right, then. If you’re looking for big, public, and visible, then I’d say…” Nerys paused, hesitant to suggest -

“Their wedding!” the Doctor finished for her, punching the air with an exuberant fist.

“No! Not a chance!” she protested.

“Why not? It’s perfect!” He ticked off the salient points on his fingers. “A posh public venue, cos the Donna I know would insist on it. We can get in easy, and the perpetrator could hide in plain sight. A controlled time range to search, and a manageable group of what, fifty people?”

“A hundred and thirty, actually,” she supplied, “but they’re all friends and family. Whoever it is won’t be able to get in.”

The Doctor shook his head. “No one knows every single person at a wedding, not even the bride and groom. Lots of people from obscure corners of one side or the other. This wedding’s just the thing.” He hopped up, eager to pursue this obvious target, and beckoned to her. “Come on! Now, when and where was this exactly?”

“But Doctor!” Nerys began again, refusing to rise.

“Don’t tell me. St. Mary’s, Hayden Road, Chiswick.”

Nerys sneered. “That was my wedding.”

“Ah, yes.” He popped himself in the side of the head with the heel of his hand. “I’ve got that address seared in my brain from two timelines.” 

“Donna’s was at Chiswick House,” Nerys supplied. “That posh venue you mentioned. They could afford it. But Doctor...”

“Then Chiswick House it is! What’s the date and time?”

“ _Doctor!_ ” 

The admonishment finally penetrated. “What?”

Nerys threw her hands up. “We can’t go there. I was- I mean, I _will_ already be there. How am I supposed to explain being there twice?”

“Oh. Yes. Well, it’s time to introduce you to the wardrobe. Come on!” With a tremendous grin, he spun and dashed out, and Nerys, stuck in a pub three years before her time, had no choice but to follow.


	7. Chapter 7

The Doctor stepped out onto the lawn behind Chiswick House, squinting in the bright summer sunlight as he affixed a white carnation to his lapel. Struggling with the flower, he grunted as he nearly dropped the pin. “You’d think I’d have the hang of this by now,” he grumbled. “I used to wish that celery came with super glue.”

“What are you on about now?” came a subdued whinge behind him.

Still fiddling with the flower, he turned around to face Nerys. “What are you doing back there? Come on, you’re supposed to be the Chiswick House’s confident and efficient assistant manager.”

Nerys shook her head. “I can’t let anyone see me like this.” 

“No one will recognise you. I think we took care of that.”

 _We certainly did_ , she thought, blushing at the memory of her appearance in the mirror once they’d finished dressing her up. To make her look as little like herself as possible, they’d piled on a curly brown wig, horn-rimmed glasses, and a deep-green business suit that was a decade out of style. She’d given herself a Mediterranean look with tan makeup on her face and hands, and underneath everything, she’d added padding to create the illusion of about three extra stone. The overall effect was that of a sweaty, overworked assistant, and the hot sun only made it worse.

“I don’t want to be seen by anybody,” she hissed. “This is shaming.”

“You have to look the part,” the Doctor reminded her. “Look like you belong here and no one will bat an eye. It’ll only be for a bit.”

“Too long.” With a sigh, she straightened her shoulders and took her place next to him. 

“Atta girl.”

“Can’t hide behind you anyway,” she grumped. “I’m better off hiding behind that signpost.”

“Oi!”

Across the lawn from them stood the pavilion where guests were starting to gather. A large rectangular open-air marquee, it was dressed with white roses and red ribbon, with large bouquets of red roses on the long dinner tables. Three children in their Sunday best chased each other in a game of tag whilst the waiters made last-minute adjustments to the settings and the event photographers set up their equipment.

“Wait,” breathed the Doctor. “I don’t see an altar or a minister, or one of those white lattice arches with all the ivy and flowers.”

“Oh, the wedding wasn’t here,” Nerys explained. “Donna wanted a private ceremony, so they got married at St. Mary’s the day before. Yesterday,” she corrected herself. “It was just them, Sylvia and Geoff, Donna’s granddad, Sam’s mum, and me and Alec, Sam’s best man. No one else.”

“Ah. Too exclusive for our purposes. Good thinking.”

“Don’t patronise me,” Nerys snapped.

“I’m not!” the Doctor squeaked, surprised at her acerbic response. “It was brilliant! We would have wasted our time. Much better we…” He caught her disgusted expression and fell silent.

Nerys sighed. “So what are we looking for?” 

“Could be anyone really. He may have to make his move for us to spot him.”

“He. Couldn’t it be a she?” she inquired.

“Course it could. He, she, neither, both, or one or more of the other forty-three known categorised genders. Inclusive ‘he’.” At that moment, the door behind them opened and a willowy woman in a summery peach dress, her blond hair twisted in a neat updo, emerged carrying a large, flat box. Without a glance at them, she slipped past and strode across the lawn to the pavilion. The Doctor slipped a comforting arm around Nerys’ shoulders as she struggled to start breathing again.

“That was me,” she finally gasped, her voice rough.

“It was,” the Doctor agreed, “and you did well, exactly as I told you. Absolutely brilliant. Most people panic at the sight of themselves, even with all the warning beforehand.”

Nerys snorted, trying to regain her composure. “To be honest, it was the dress. I’d forgotten how bad I looked in it. Leave it to Donna to choose peach, of all colours.” She paused, staring hard toward the pavilion. “And that hair. I’d no idea it looked so bad from the rear. I’m never going back to that salon.”

Grinning, the Doctor patted her on the back and stepped away to a more appropriate working distance. He pointed toward where younger Nerys has disappeared to. “What were you carrying there?”

“Fairy cakes,” she replied. “Donna and I took a baking class when we were, oh, twelve, I think, and we made a pact that we would make fairy cakes for each other’s weddings. I almost forgot about it. Stayed up all the night before making three batches and icing them.”

The Doctor nodded. “You and Donna are really close.”

“Always have been, ever since I can remember. Met her at swimming lessons before we even started school. I still can’t swim, but we’re mates for life.” She looked askance at the Doctor. “But she’s never told you about me, has she?”

“It’s pretty apparent she hasn’t told me about anything, really. Though I suppose she’d say the same about me.” He scrubbed at his jaw with a hand. “Makes you wonder what ‘best mates’ really means, doesn’t it?”

An older woman with an imperious air walked out from under the pavilion and scanned the lawn. Spotting the Doctor and Nerys, she marched toward them. “Oh, and there’s Sylvia,” the Doctor breathed. 

“Oh, right. You’d know her from Donna’s wedding.”

“Yup-ah. Not all that well, mind you,” he clarified. “Never even introduced. But I saw how she welcomed her daughter back to her own wedding reception. You can learn a lot about a person by watching how they treat family. And I don’t think she was pleased when we left to go to Clements.” He flashed a friendly grin at the woman and bobbed a bow as she approached.

“You’re the manager on duty, aren’t you?” 

“Yes. John Smith, at your service, ma’am.” He stepped aside to present Nerys to Donna’s mother. “And this is my assistant, Marge.”

Nerys attempted to simultaneously smile confidently and cringe away from Donna’s mother and only produced a sour smirk like she was sucking on a pickle. Sylvia sniffed disdainfully as her gaze raked over Nerys’ pudgy form and the Doctor’s trainers.

“I suppose you’ll have to do,” she declared. “You need to put out two more place settings on that last table. The Martins brought all their children, instead of just the eldest like they promised, so we’re short two.” The Doctor opened his mouth to reply, but she waved him off. “Yes, it’s not in the contract, I know. Sam’ll settle up, I’m sure of it. Oh, and the cake table.” She turned to point toward the head of the pavilion. “It’s too small. It’d be fine if we had only the wedding cake, but Nerys insisted on bringing that load of raspberry fairy cakes and setting them up right there. It’s ruining the entire display! She just doesn’t understand that nobody cares about some cakes she and Donna made when they were girls.” Rolling her eyes, she shook her head.

Nerys swallowed down her pique and managed an even reply. “Perhaps it’s a sentimental gesture between her and the bride.”

“She can make a sentimental gesture at her own wedding, then,” Sylvia snapped. “Not that that’s likely to happen. The sour harpy never could hold onto a man long enough.” She caught Nerys’ offended scowl and rolled her eyes. “Oh, smarten up and get me a new table. A small one off to the side of the cake will do. Off you pop.” She turned on her heel and strode back to the pavilion. 

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor murmured when Sylvia was out of earshot.

“No, no,” Nerys choked out, then sniffed. “I’ve heard a lot of the things Sylvia says, from Donna. Only to be expected that some of it would be about me. I’ll go find someone to add that table and the settings.” She hurried off, and the Doctor wasn’t quite sure if he’d heard her sob.

The Doctor ambled across the lawn and slipped into the pavilion to observe Sylvia managing the last-minute details of her daughter’s wedding reception as more guests began to arrive. She stalked about, issuing commands and lamenting that Donna’s reception was going to be a disaster due to gross incompetence. Behind her trailed a kind-looking man the Doctor remembered as Donna’s father Geoff. His sole purpose seemed to be making sure that once Sylvia turned toward her next victim, the previous person’s efforts were acknowledged and appreciated.

Though he didn’t personally meet the guests at Donna’s other wedding, the Doctor was surprised to find he remembered quite a few of them, enough that he could rule them out as being the unknown meddler in her timeline. This left Sam’s family and friends. It was easy enough to identify them as they selected their places at the family tables, but he couldn’t spot anything that would lead him to think they had anything to do with the time issues. Every one of them was human. He didn’t detect any shimmers or morphic illusions. No one carried any suspicious equipment. They were all simply people, gathered to celebrate the union of two beloved friends.

The Doctor then turned his attention to the staff. With most of the preparations done, the men and women dressed in crisp white uniforms waited by the serving stations for the festivities to begin. Others wove through the guests, offering canapes and drinks on trays. An older man in a crisp suit stood by watching and occasionally giving orders to the waiters; he was apparently the real event director that the Doctor was only pretending to be. He seemed to disapprove of everything he saw, and the Doctor wondered at the permanent half-sneer that wrinkled his nose.

Out of the corner of his eye, the Doctor spotted a small, older man in a crisp tux with a white rose in his buttonhole emerge from the house and amble slowly across the lawn. Something about him niggled at the back of his mind, and as he tried to place him, Nerys - the blond maid-of-honour version - stepped out with a rare delighted smile to escort him to a seat at one of the Noble family tables, where he was greeted with warmth and fondness.

Frowning, the Doctor tugged at his ear whilst he dug through his past for any clue of who the man was. An image of the man sitting in his own little wooden box, wearing a woolen cap and talking about the Queen, teased the Doctor then fled. He groaned silently; the cloud of temporal flux kicked up by these time shifts was apparently playing tricks with his memory. He knew he’d met the man before, and, given his chaotic lifestyle, meeting any creature twice by chance usually held some significance. If only he could remember. _London_ , he told himself, _definitely London, on an empty road, with -_

“Got the table ordered in,” said a voice at his shoulder, startling him. Frumpy Nerys peered at him. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” the Doctor assured her, though he couldn’t quite look at her. “I’m always all right.”

“Good,” she replied, looking back the way she’d come. “I had to tell them I was with the Thomases, because the real assistant coordinator was right there. We’re going to need better stories.”

The Doctor shrugged. “Different lies for different situations.”

“Yeah,” Nerys agreed. “Pinpointed your suspect yet?”

“No,” he admitted. “Ruled out a few, though. Anyone I recognise from Donna’s other wedding, though I suppose you know them all already.”

“And a lot of Sam’s side as well. I met them all last time, which is now for her.” Eyes closed to avoid even a glance, she jerked her head toward her past self, who’d returned to her fairy cakes and was waiting impatiently for the new table to be brought in. ”There’re really not many here that don’t at least ring a bell. I’m starting to think maybe it’ll be a tourist walking the grounds.”

“Could be. What about the wait staff?”

“I wouldn’t know. It’s not like I remember them, except that girl there. Her name’s Laura. You’ll see, she’ll help me with the cakes in a tick. _She_ thought they were sweet.” She shook her head. “You know, you’re going about this all wrong, Doctor.”

He turned to her, frowning. “How’s that?”

“You’re trying to guess which one out of over a hundred people here doesn’t belong. That’s impossible.” She held up her hand with her fingers in a V. “But you’ve already seen this happen twice, so you should be trying to figure out who you saw then that’s here now.”

The Doctor’s face lit up at the idea, then crashed. “I was in a huge crowd both times. No way I can remember everyone. I’m good, but I'm not that good.”

“Right,” Nerys drawled with a sceptical smirk. “Well, where did you say this first happened?”

“At the Spice Girls concert. We were queued up to go backstage.”

“The Spice Girls concert? _You_ went with her?” Nerys barely managed to keep from screaming at him. “She told me she went with Susie Mair.”

“Wrong timeline, Nerys,” the Doctor reminded her, shaking his head. “My Donna didn’t get to go to the concert, so I took her back for it. She couldn’t afford to, because of the wedding.”

“The wedding.” Nerys struggled to put everything she knew about this strange world into place. “Not to Sam, right? To Lance.”

“Right. She said you offered to buy her a ticket to go with you, but she didn’t cos she would’ve felt like a third wheel with you and…” He faltered, groping for a name he’d heard once in a fading memory. It didn’t help that he hadn’t been paying attention.

“Me and who?” hissed Nerys, misinterpreting his silence as reluctance to identify the mystery man. “It wasn’t Devon Blackman, was it? I wouldn’t date him in any version of reality.”

“Sounds right,” the Doctor blurted before his brain managed to process Nerys’ comment and stop his gob.

“Bollocks!” She planted her fists on her overly-padded hips, and the Doctor could almost see the steam blasting out of her ears. “Donna’s had some loser boyfriends, but he was a world-class wanker. Milked her for her bank account, then dumped her and came after me. I did not need to know that in your ‘original timeline’” - and she clawed air quotes as she spat it out - “I’d been that desperate.”

“She just said ‘Devon’. Could be any Devon,” the Doctor suggested weakly. 

“Maybe on your planet that name’s common, but not here,” she snapped. 

“Oh, no,” the Doctor breathed. “No Devons on Gallifrey. Not pompous enough, that name. Romanadvoratrelundar. Now that’s a Time Lord name. Or Darkelatraquistahastrad. Fuldanquin Borusa. Narvinectrelonum. Irving.”

Nerys glared at him, then sighed. “All right. Yeah. Yeah, I know. It’s a different timeline, so it doesn’t signify. Me and Devon,” Nerys muttered. She pinched at her nose, and the dark makeup on her hands reminded her that she needed to concentrate. “All right. Yeah. All right. Nice to hear I got to go to the concert in some reality, I guess.”

“What about this Susie Mair? Is she here as well?” the Doctor asked.

“Of course,” Nerys replied. She glanced around at the assembled guests. “She’s right over -“ With a gasp, she rounded on the Doctor. “It’s not Susie Mair.”

“Why not?” asked the Doctor as he craned his neck to look in the general direction Nerys had been about to point. “She’s a common thread. Donna said she was at the concert, and she could have been at Trafalgar and I wouldn’t know.”

“I’ve known her since secondary. It’s not her,” Nerys insisted, stamping her sensible-shoe-clad foot. “Besides, this time-changing thing, it’s got to be some kind of alien tech wizardry, doesn’t it?”

“Yup…”

“That settles it, then. Susie drinks tea cos she can’t work the coffeemaker.”

“All right, then,” he conceded. “Donna mentioned a Veena as well -” 

“No, Doctor!” Nerys hissed. “It’s not one of our friends. I’m not hearing another word of this.”

The Doctor rocked away from her, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Well,” he replied grudgingly, “we’ll check them if nothing else pans out.”

“If we must. Back to the concert then. Anyone stand out there?”

He shook his head as he tried to remember. “Not really. There were security guards at the door, and there were a lot of us standing around waiting to get in. No one remarkable, though. Just fans and some press.”

The ambient noise rose, catching their attention, and in a wave, the guests stood and turned toward the house. The Doctor and Nerys followed their gazes to see Donna emerging from the house on the arm of the man the Doctor had seen with her in Trafalgar Square. Blond Nerys broke from the crowd to help the bride with the train of her gown whilst the hired photographers began recording the event.

Nerys grabbed the Doctor’s arm. “Doctor! Look!”

The Doctor thumped himself in the head with the heel of his hand. “Photographers! Of course!” He took a step and barely caught himself from crashing to the ground as a wave of dizziness washed over him.

“Doctor!” Nerys cried, pulling him back to steady him. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he murmured, concentrating through the haze in his head on the three photographers at the head of the crowd. He waved some limp fingers at one of them and coughed out, “That one. The bloke, not the two women. He was at the concert. Paparazzi. Don’t let him get away.”

Though the man was too far away to hear them over the crowd, he turned and eyed the pair, then with a smile, ducked through the guests and dashed off.

Nerys hesitated. “But Doctor -“

“Go! I’m just getting my feet. Stop him!”

Nerys sped off as best as she could, hampered by the padding hidden under her clothes, which bounced bulkily as she ran. She kept the man in sight as he headed down a path and over a footbridge crossing the long, narrow pond that separated the house lawn from the woods around the cricket ground, but lost sight of him in the trees. As she paused to catch her breath, the Doctor dashed up beside her. “I’m sorry,” she panted, “I couldn’t keep up.”

“That’s okay,” the Doctor assured her. “We know where he’s going.”

“Which is?”

“Not out of the Chiswick House grounds,” he answered as he thumbed over his shoulder. “He had a real headstart on us, and he chose not to leave the easy way.”

“Which probably means he wants us to catch him,” Nerys concluded.

“Right. On his terms, of course. I’m sure he’s got something waiting for us.”

“A trap?”

“Yup-ah.”

Nerys stared at the Doctor, then shrugged. “Why not? This day can’t possibly get worse.” She headed off in the direction the man had fled.

“Is that a challenge?” the Doctor wondered as he followed.

“Absolutely not!” she hissed back at him.


	8. Chapter 8

Nerys couldn’t quite convince herself to run towards an obvious trap, and as she walked briskly, the rather ugly flats she’d chosen to finish off her disguise crunching on the path, she wondered if she’d be able to recognise their quarry, given the brief glimpse she’d caught of him. But recognition turned out to be the least of her worries. The young man leant against a tree just off the path, shaded by the canopy overhead. His casual stance broadcast his unconcern at their approach, all except for the expensive camera in his hand, its lens pointed directly at her heart.

“Nerys,” the Doctor warned from a few steps behind her.

“Oh, I see him,” she murmured as she stopped. She had no interest in getting any nearer. The Doctor sidled up next to her and stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets. Nerys noticed that he stepped a bit forward as he prepared to speak, as if to shield her. She was quite content to take any protection he offered.

“Is this your new friend, Doctor?” the man called, his tone conversational. “You certainly don’t waste any time replacing old ones, do you?” He motioned at her with the device. “It’s truly in your best interest to keep her where I can see her,” the man warned.

“Certainly.” The Doctor made a show of stepping to the side, though not far. “Interesting device you’ve got there.” He jerked his chin at the man’s camera. “A bit more than just a camera, isn’t it? I might wonder where you got it.”

“This old thing?” The man held it up and made a show of inspecting the dials and buttons on it, though the target of the lens never wavered. “It is my prized possession.” His accent was slow and formal, at odds with his youthful, modern appearance.

“I’ll say. I haven’t seen one in years.” The Doctor turned to Nerys. “That’s a stochastic chronon manipulator, you see. Powerful bit of technology. Point it at someone and press the button and,” he clicked his fingers, “it changes something somewhere in its target’s timeline, just like that. _Bam!_ ” She jumped back as he punched the air. “Chooses something completely at random, could be anything, even something as insignificant as a single word or an offhand motion. But the effect! Could be as small as dropping the toothpaste made you late for work one day or big as crossing the street at a different corner gets you run over and killed.” He paused to let that sink in. ”What’s more, it protects its wielder. Immune to paradox, are you?” he called out, and the man smiled back.

“The Monan Host almost started a war with the Time Lords over that thing,” the Doctor continued. “They admired its precision, its ability to isolate a single quantum of time and manipulate it, and they tried everything they could think of to get one. Destiny’s Scalpel, they called it. Time Lords, though, they were never so imaginative. Officially, it’s the Spear of Rassilon, because Rassilon’s got to take credit for everything - I’m sure that was the second law on the books, after ‘must wear impractical hats’ - but the common name for it was the chaos gun.” He craned his neck to take another look, and Nerys noticed that he used the action to sidle a bit more in front of her as her shield. “I suppose that does a much better job of describing it. It’s a very advanced weapon. Too advanced, really.” His voice turned icy as he peered back at the man. “Comes straight from Gallifrey, so you must, as well.” 

The man’s smug demeanour shifted not a whit. The Doctor shook his head. “I couldn’t see it. That thing’s powerful. So powerful, its temporal field masked everything about you. Even now, you look just like anyone else on this planet.” His eyes hardened. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Neither you, isn’t that right, Doctor?” the man crooned.

“How did you escape the Time War?” the Doctor demanded.

“Asks the man who made sure he was the only one to survive it,” he drawled, disgust simmering in his eyes.

“Who _are_ you?” the Doctor growled, stepping forward with his fists clenched.

The man shook his head, brandishing the camera with his finger firmly on the shutter release. “I wouldn’t if I were you, Doctor. You’ve already lost one companion. I don’t think you want to lose another.” 

The Doctor stopped cold, quivering. “Don’t you dare.”

“Doctor!” Nerys squeaked as she grabbed his arm. “He’s not going to… Is he?”

“Not at all, Ms...?” The man tacitly asked her name with a slight nod.

“Nerys,” she replied, her face twisted into a fearful scowl.

“Ms. Nerys,” he repeated. “I shan’t use this on you if the Doctor behaves. You have my word that I have no designs on you, but if he forces me to defend myself, I will.”

“Somehow, I’m not reassured,” she spat back.

“No, he won’t.” The Doctor turned to Nerys and grasped her by the shoulders to calm her. “He’s had plenty of opportunity. You’re safe, as long as we keep this civil.” With a brief warm smile, he nodded at her, then turned back to the man. “This is all about Donna.”

The man feigned innocence. “Oh, is it?”

“What do you want with her?” Nerys could hear in the Doctor’s voice the burning anger kept carefully restrained. “Why are you tampering with her life?”

“Isn’t it fascinating, Doctor?” the man asked, waving airily with his free hand. “Watching your friend’s life unravel before your eyes? First your friendship and her life travelling with you, then her family history is changing, and now it’s melting away. Oh, you didn’t know, did you? This time, all that changed was a simple conversation.” He glanced up at the branch above him as if considering the change carefully. “A little chat in a café six months ago between Donna and her friend - Veena is her name, I believe - which made Egypt so much more interesting of a honeymoon spot than Spain. She changed their travel plans, and then she fell ill on the trip and miscarried her first child.” 

Nerys gasped. “Is that what changed, Doctor? Is that what you remember? Donna didn’t lose the baby?”

“No, she didn’t,” he confirmed, though his stormy eyes remained locked on the Time Lord. “In the last timeline, Donna had two children.”

Nerys clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh my lord!”

Clenching his fists, the Doctor sneered at the man. “Why are you doing this?” he cried.

The man ignored the question. “Maybe the next time I’ll target further back. She won’t marry Sam. Maybe she won’t even meet him. Or perhaps she’ll marry Vince James. Didn’t you know about him?”

“That was forever ago!” Nerys gasped.

“Fifteen years, yes,” he confirmed. “They could have married. Maybe sometime soon, they will have. And then I’ll take that away from her as well. I can go all the way back. One day, Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Noble will have been a childless couple. And I can go further up that line, too. Everything about her is changing, Doctor. Everything you know about her is crumbling away into dust - just like Gallifrey did.” 

“Is that what this is about?” the Doctor demanded.

“What is it?” asked Nerys. “What is he talking about?”

“Tell her, Doctor,” the man urged. “Tell her what you’ve done. Or are you afraid she won’t think so highly of you once she knows?”

“Proves how much you know.” Jamming his hands in his pockets, he looked her up and down. “She doesn’t trust me further than she can throw me.”

“I don’t trust either of you,” Nerys snapped.

The Doctor shrugged. “See? So what is this? Some kind of twisted scheme of revenge?”

“Oh, no, not at all,” the man replied, his tone sickly sweet. “It goes much deeper than that.”

“Whatever it is, it stops now.”

The man’s face twisted into a supercilious sneer. “You’ve been away from your own kind too long, Doctor. Perhaps a snarled command and a stern look is enough to cow these primitives, but it won’t work on me. I am your equal, and I am not afraid of you. I will do as I wish. I can peek in on Donna Noble’s life at any moment and transform it into something completely unrecognisable. Then I’ll move on.”

He tapped his lips with a finger. “You’ve had so many companions, Doctor. Which one should I choose next? Lucie Miller? Charlotte Pollard? Oh, I know, how about Ace? Imagine how much havoc I could wreak changing her timeline? The effects would stretch far beyond the paltry adventures she had with you. They may even change the course of the Time War itself. Or I could go further back. Nyssa of Traken. Leela’s behind the time lock, so she’s out. Oh! Think of what would happen if I changed a moment in the life of one Sarah Jane Smith.”

He pushed off the tree and took a menacing step forward. “You see, I’ve done my homework. I’ve hundreds of years of your life to undo, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me. All you can do is watch. Though,” and he bowed to Nerys, “I do keep my promises. I shan’t change your life, except as it relates to Ms. Noble’s. Farewell, Doctor. Oh, and don’t bother trying to find me. You’ll be searching all of time and space.”

The man leant back and disappeared into the trunk of the tree. 

“What?” Nerys cried, striding forward a step before turning back to the Doctor with a quizzical look.

“Wait for it,” he murmured, nodding back at the spot where the man once stood.

“Wait for what?” she asked as the screech of a time rotor split the air. As her mouth dropped open, the tree faded, pulsing into nothingness, leaving the ground it had been growing from unbroken.

“That was his TARDIS.”

“His TARDIS was a tree?” she squeaked.

“A TARDIS disguises itself to blend in wherever it lands,” he explained. “It can look like anything.”

“Then why’s yours a ratty old shack?”

“Oi!” He glared at her, then spun away into the grass on the side of the path. He kicked at the sod. “We’ve got to focus. We’ve got to figure out where he’ll go next.”

“We can’t,” Nerys countered. “He said he could go anywhere or change anything. He said you won’t be able to find him.”

“Red herring,” he replied. “This is personal. He’s hell bent on hurting me, with Donna as the implement, and he wants to watch. He wants to wait long enough between shifts to give me hope that the previous one was the last, and then change her life again and watch me suffer through each moment of torture. That’s why he mentioned all my old friends, to rile me up, get me after him. Besides, we have to stop him. You heard what he plans to do. He wants to change my entire life by targeting my friends. That’s going to affect far more than just you and Donna, more than just London or Earth. He’s changing the universe one moment at a time.”

Nerys crossed her arms. “And just how do you plan to stop him?”

The Doctor paused, his hand in his hair. He chewed on his tongue as he thought. Nerys glared at him, then sighed. “You’re going to every event in Donna’s life that you can think of, aren’t you? You’re going to chase that man through time and change more and more of this world until it isn’t here at all, aren’t you?”

“I’m trying to stop _him_ from doing that, Nerys,” the Doctor growled. “You know that.”

Striding up to him, she poked him hard enough that he rocked back. “But the final outcome is going to be the same either way, isn’t it? You’re going to wipe me and all of this out of time. You’re going to put it all back the way it was and I’ll be gone.”

“Nerys…”

“You won’t just stop him and leave it at that,” she yelled, her voice more shrill with each word. “None of this matters to you at all, does it?”

The Doctor’s resolve finally broke and he drew himself up, towering over her. “How am I supposed to make that choice, Nerys?” he thundered, and Nerys sprang back a step in surprise. “Tell me that. How do I choose between the world I knew four hours ago and this one? How do I even choose between all of the different versions of Donna’s life I’ve seen with you? She had a daughter the first time you and I visited her, and then she had a daughter and a son, and now she just has a son. In a tick, she might not even be married anymore. Why don’t you choose? You tell me which one gives Donna and you and everyone else the best life, and when I catch that bloke and get his device, I promise you I’ll do it. I’ll set the timeline you choose.”

Nerys stared at him in horror as his words sank in. She clapped her hands to her mouth and her breath started to stutter.

The Doctor’s eyes hardened. “It isn’t that easy, is it? Could you choose to make Donna miscarry her daughter just because that’s the reality you’re in now? I saw you with Sarah, two shifts ago, and I don’t think Auntie Nerys would make that choice.” Suddenly softening, he stepped forward and laid a hand on her shoulder and continued in the gentlest voice she’d ever heard. “All I know is, the first version, that’s the simplest and the safest. That’s the one where no one’s tampered with anything, where the universe is going along the way it wants, not the way someone’s forcing it to go. I don’t know if it’s going to end well for anyone, but I can’t guarantee that for this timeline or any other, either.”

Nerys stared at him, her fists clenched at the sides of her padded trousers, her cheek twitching. She coughed to clear her throat unnecessarily, possibly to conceal her glistening eyes, then snatched the wig off her head and started to pull the pins from her hair. “Take me home, Doctor,” she growled. “I want to go home.”

“You won’t help me, then.” 

“No, I won’t. I absolutely will not.” She shook out her shining blond hair, then stood tall, fixing the Doctor with a proud, angry glare. “I helped you this far and I refuse to be responsible for anything more. But I’ll tell you where to go, and it won’t be where I want to tell you to go.” She sniffed. “Like you said, he’s luring you, so it’s got to be public moments with known dates, so that you know when to go and you can see it happen. No one knows Donna’s life better than me, except Donna herself. I’ll tell you the best candidates.” She swallowed hard, then wriggled her fingers like she was struggling to refrain from decking him. “Then you’ll take me home. I don’t want to know when it happens.”

The Doctor deflated, and he stuffed his hands in his pockets. “All right. I can’t ask for more, really. Thank you, Nerys. And… I’m sorry.”

Nerys spun on her heel and marched back the way she came, a despondent Time Lord trailing in her wake.


	9. Chapter 9

One thing that travelling across the breadth of space and time taught you, the Doctor liked to tell himself, was how to cope with anything. He’d hundreds of years of experience in the field, escaping dungeons, thwarting power-mad dictators, outwitting dastardly traps, and dismantling oppressive governments. The one thing it didn’t teach you, however, was how to survive forced inactivity.

It took all of the Doctor’s willpower to not mutter “Boredboredboredboredbored” under his breath as he sat in the waiting room of the maternity ward of Chiswick Hospital. Though Nerys had known Matthew’s birthdate and that he’d been born late at night, she hadn’t known when Donna had arrived at hospital. She did know, however, that human mothers’ first labours were often long, so the Doctor took her advice of arriving no later than noon, settling in what became his favourite chair as the late morning shifts began arriving. 

In the five hours he’d been here, he’d already read three times through the two thick novels he’d brought with him and all of the medical pamphlets and outdated magazines the ward had to offer. He couldn’t wander off and miss the arrival of either the expectant mother or the Time Lord hunting her, so he’d tried to work off his excess energy by ranging about the room, drawing black looks from the other visitors until a nurse came out to insist that he either relax in a seat or grab a bite in the canteen. He’d reluctantly pulled out one of his books and settled back down to read it for the fourth time.

It certainly was possible that the Time Lord - Doctor was starting to think of him as “Murray” simply to have a name to call him - wasn’t going to appear at this event. It satisfied the criteria that was both public and an easily pinpointed date, but predicting his moves was more of an art than a science. Nerys had correctly predicted two of the events that Murray would target after the wedding, Donna’s father’s funeral and the time she and her mother got rear-ended on Chiswick High Road right in front of the Sainsbury Local, but the Doctor had stood all night outside the social where Donna’d had her eighteenth birthday party with nary a hiccough in the timeline.

Braving the censure of the other people in the room, the Doctor jumped up from his seat, stuffed his book back in his pocket, and stalked out into the corridor for the eighth time so far. A quick glance in both directions confirmed that though the hospital was as busy as ever, neither of his concerns, Donna nor Murray, were present. 

With a sigh, he paced off on his now-habitual circuit around the wing, taking the opportunity to thoroughly assess each person he passed to gauge if they might be the Time Lord wearing a different face after a forced regeneration. At their last meeting, as he’d raced off after “taking evidence photos” of the collision, the Doctor had managed to corner him and almost got hold of the device before the man slipped away. After that near miss, Murray would certainly take steps to protect himself, but was this crazed plan of his worth wasted regenerations? The Doctor was afraid it might.

On his fifth lap, a familiar voice berating an orderly for pushing her too slowly - “At this rate, baby’s gonna pop out ready for sixth form, sunshine!” - caught his attention, and he flattened against the wall as his extratemporal companion wheeled passed him, her husband desperately trying to calm both her and himself as he trotted beside her. 

Just as the trio reached the maternity ward, the door opened and Murray, garbed in scrubs with a hospital ID clipped on the shirt and carrying what looked like a large PDA, stepped out. The Doctor didn’t have time to react: after glancing around to verify that the Doctor was present and watching, Murray leant in to ask Donna a question, then tapped a few buttons on the device in his hand, and the now-familiar vertigo struck the Doctor. Ignoring the haze in his head, the Doctor pushed off the wall to spring after him, skirting around a gurney parked on the side, and collided with a nurse wheeling a machine to the lift. 

“Sorry! Sorry!” he blurted, grabbing her shoulders to steady her as he saw the Time Lord wave the orderly pushing Donna through the ward door then flash a smug smirk at his pursuer before he strode off.

“I’m fine, sir,” the nurse replied. “No harm done.”

“Excellent,” he said and bobbed a quick nod. “Sorry, must dash.” He stepped around her and sprinted down the corridor, but the man had already disappeared through a door near the nurse’s station.

The small office the Doctor stepped into was practical and clean, obviously a consultation room as evidenced by the pair of comfortable guest chairs arrayed in front of the large desk and the two large bookcases of medical literature. Murray was nowhere to be seen. The Doctor glanced around the room a second time then, crossing his arms, leant back against the door.

“I will catch you, you know, one of these times.”

The Time Lord’s voice emanated from no particular direction. “Perhaps. You came close last time, but you haven’t managed it yet.”

“I see you’ve abandoned the photography angle.”

“Yes. I’d become too predictable, hadn’t I? I suppose I should thank you for encouraging me to improve my methods. I think you’ll find it a lot more difficult to figure out when I’ll strike and how.”

“You know, this thing you’re doing, all of this tinkering with Donna’s life,” the Doctor began in an obviously futile attempt to talk Murray into abandoning his schemes, “it’s not accomplishing anything. It’s not going to change anything I did during the war, and it’s not going to bring our people and Gallifrey back. All you’re doing is gaining some perverse pleasure from watching me suffer. You’re a Time Lord. You’re better than this.”

“I’m not doing this solely for that pleasure, Doctor. Oh, if you only knew. You’d be surprised what the chaos gun can do.”

“It can’t break the time lock. It can’t change anything that happened in the war.”

“It doesn’t need to. It’s doing just fine as it is.”

The Doctor’s jaw clenched, and he growled, “Stop this. Do what you want with me. Just leave Donna out of this.”

“I don’t think so, Doctor. Gallifrey has allowed you too much latitude to do whatever you wanted, to break the Laws of Time and to impose your version of morality on the universe. It’s time someone rectified that. Someone needs to show you just what it’s like to be the one being meddled with, and as I’m the only Time Lord left, that burden falls on me.” The _clunk_ of the spooling of a time rotor filled the room, then he spoke once more as the grind crescendoed. “I have my work to do. I am sure I shall see you again.” The bookcase nearer the door began to fade, and winked out as the whine of the rotor trailed off.

The Doctor leant back against the door and stared at the empty wall where the bookcase had stood moments before. After a half a minute, he licked his lips, nodded, then turned and slipped out.


	10. Chapter 10

The Doctor liked a little pub, almost as much as he liked a little shop. People couldn’t shop at a pub, mind you, but if one was a mite parched and fancied a warm welcome, no questions asked, well, there was nowhere else for it but a little pub. The Griffon was a bit larger than little, expanded on the original seventeenth-century stonework so elbows weren’t so rubbed and to provide outside seating in the summer, but the low, thick rafters above preserved the cozy atmosphere. Various old-fashioned implements of cast iron, beaten copper, and worn wood adorned the walls, giving it a homey feeling. The crowd was thinning in the lull between dinner and late-evening merrymaking, but the clinking of glasses and the murmur of friendly voices had burst forth as the Doctor opened the front door, coaxing him to join in the weekend festivities.

As he stepped in and nodded to the bartender, he wondered how this evening, the night where Donna and her future husband first met, would go. The situation was getting desperate: the original timeline, in which the bride who’d appeared uninvited in his TARDIS had been ginger and not blond, barely whispered in his mind. He glanced down at the faint, unintelligible lines of ink on his palm and suspected that the next shift would erase them entirely. His last chance, then, this evening. 

A quick survey of the room assured the Doctor that neither Donna nor Sam were present, but he spotted Murray lounging at a corner table from which he could observe the entire room, an amber drink sitting in front of him. He wore a formal jacket and waistcoat, at odds with his youthful countenance but very much in line for a haughty, supercilious Time Lord. At the Doctor’s notice, he raised his drink in invitation to join him. The Doctor didn’t hesitate; Murray obviously felt his position and plans were secure, and the Doctor intended to take full advantage of it to do what he needed to do. He slipped his coat off as he crossed the establishment and laid it over the back of one of the chairs, then plopped down in another.

“Ah, Doctor,” the man drawled as the Doctor settled back. “Fancy meeting you here. A night out on the town?” 

“Well,” the Doctor drawled, “when you live alone, sometimes you crave a spot of company.”

“Really?” The man affected an air of disbelief. “Even from primitives like these? I’ve been listening to them all evening and they haven’t an ounce of intelligence among them.”

“That’s always been the problem with you lot,” the Doctor spat at him. “Always sitting on the outside, observing and listening, never once actually getting in there and getting to know these people. You’d find there’s a lot more to a person, to any creature, than the dinner conversation you can overhear.”

The man’s lips curved in a brief, condescending smirk. He picked up the glass in front of him and took a short sip, then examined the clear liquid. “I suppose you may be right. At the very least, they have made some advances in the distillation of spirits. This in particular is called ‘Scotch whisky’. I’ve taken the opportunity to sample several others and found them quite fine.” He placed the glass back down. 

The Doctor settled back in his chair. He needed to keep up his end of the banter, appearing to be on the defensive to encourage the man to continue gloating and talking. “You seem rather relaxed, considering I’m here to end your little scheme.”

Murray continued to gaze at the golden drink. “There’s really nothing you can do about it. To be honest, this is the final trap. All the roads led here, and there’s nothing beyond this for you.”

“If I had a quid for every time someone’s said that to me...”

He looked up, frowning. “If I may ask, what is a ‘quid’?”

Ignoring the question, the Doctor scanned the empty table, the chairs next to the man, and the man himself, but could detect no hint of any object that could be the chaos gun, though he supposed the man’s pockets might be dimensionally transcendental. _They’re bigger on the inside!_ His words to Donna as he brandished a robot remote control flashed through his mind from a distant timeline, and he held onto them like a lifeline. Nerys hadn’t asked the question in her similar situation.

“I see you’re keeping the device well-hidden,” he remarked.

“Oh, come now, Doctor. Give me some credit. I know better than to keep my secrets within arm’s reach of you. Rest assured that the device is both safe and ready to be used when appropriate.” The man smiled. “I’ve noticed that you’re also missing something, for at least three meetings now. Your little friend has abandoned you, has she? After finding out what you did?”

The Doctor shook his head as he snorted with amusement. “Sorry, you don’t get credit for that. Nerys was hardly a friend. Just someone who could help me figure out what was going on, and she left the moment we found you. Her opinion of me was rock bottom long before you came along, and she would’ve rather been anywhere else.”

“The one person able to see past your charming facade, eh?” He cocked his head. “Or perhaps is it that you’re just trying to keep me from targeting her as well by pretending indifference?”

The Doctor leant back and crossed his arms. “Doesn’t matter who you target. I’d be upset no matter who you tampered with. You’ve already chosen sharper daggers to stab and twist. Nerys would be a step backwards.”

The man picked up his whisky and toasted his opponent with a smile. At that moment, the front door of the pub opened and a bevy of women, loud with raucous laughter, entered, among them a familiar figure with long copper hair. The man gestured in her direction. “And there she is now. Look well, Doctor. It may well be the last time you see her.”

The Doctor stared, scrubbing his hand down his jaw as he fixed Donna’s face in his mind. He had to keep focus, but it was the sight of her blond friend behind her that wrenched him back to the man at the table. Her life was no less important than Donna’s. “Thing is,” the Doctor continued, forcing a relaxed, conversational demeanour, “you know all about those daggers, and the question is, how? How do you know so much about me?”

Murray snorted as he placed his drink down on the table. “It isn’t difficult. You’ve meddled in so many lives, all over the known universe, and especially right here on this tawdry little planet. The information isn’t difficult to find, if one knows where to look.”

“And yet you’re missing vital pieces. If you really had done your homework, you’d know that Lucie, Charley, and the others aren’t the best targets. You’d be targeting Rose.” The Doctor smiled as the lines of the man’s neck tensed for a brief moment. “Ah, yes, you didn’t know about her.”

“Irrelevant,” Murray drawled, his condescending smile back on his face. “I know quite enough. A few years and a handful of friends makes no difference.”

“Yes,” the Doctor agreed. “You know about Donna, and you know about all of my friends from before the Time War. Which means you must be someone from the war or just before it, and you must have came directly to this point in my timeline, skipping over the last few years.”

“Must I now?”

“Or perhaps you just had access to the information. Inquisitor? Celestial Intervention Agency? Of course, you could be both a friend _and_ a spy.” The Doctor scrubbed at his chin, sifting through memories he’d tried so hard to forget. “A comrade in the war? That’s really the only explanation, but who? Everyone I know died. Again and again. Usually right in front of me.”

The man’s mask of lazy indifference fell away, and he sneered, “Everyone died, Doctor? Everyone? You never once had a man go missing?” 

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed, matching the man’s menace. “In a war over the whole of the universe, across thousands of years? Of course people went missing, all the time. But that doesn’t explain how you’re here now. The Time Lords are gone, no matter where they were when I fired the Moment.”

“Not all of them, obviously.”

“No, not all of them,” the Doctor agreed, but he wasn’t thinking about himself or Murray. The Master had survived the end of the war as well, by using a chameleon arch to transform himself into a human. If that simple sleight-of-hand had hidden him from the baleful gaze of the most powerful weapon in the universe, there must have been a dozen other ways to escape the genocide.

“You weren’t there,” the Doctor blurted on a hunch. “That’s how you escaped the Moment, when it erased every Time Lord in the universe. You weren’t actually in the universe at the time.”

“Oh, very good!” simpered Murray. “Gold star for inductive reasoning!”

“Pocket dimension? Voidship? Another universe entirely? Too many possibilities to guess, so why don’t you just tell me?”

“Pocket dimension, not much more than a bubble of spacetime,” Murray replied as he casually dusted the sleeve of his jacket. “Not by choice, mind you. It’s very difficult to avoid getting sucked through the gashes in the walls of the universe left by the claws of cosmic horrors rampaging through the time vortex.”

Far too many abominations, summoned by both sides of the war, that fit that description came to mind and the Doctor grimaced against the memories that flooded him. He’d had no hand in calling them up nor in giving them license to tear apart reality, but the screams of those who’d been so unlucky as to have survived encountering them echoed through his mind.

“Ah,” crooned Murray, a triumphant note ringing through, “I think I have finally hit a nerve. You remember them, don’t you? I do.” His lips curled into an accusatory snarl. “And you, with your unbelievable hubris, you thought you could lock them away again. You dragged your whole platoon right into the storm.”

“The Maelstrom of Souls,” the Doctor breathed.

“Is that what they named it?” he pondered with a mock scholarly air. “Graveyards always receive the most poetic names. Though I suppose a singularity with a hundred trapped Time Lord consciousnesses orbiting forever at the event horizon really couldn’t be considered a graveyard, could it? More of an eternal prison, I’d say.”

“Those horrors were swallowing planets. Trillions had died by the time we went in, and millions more each second we waited,” countered the Doctor. 

“You are always so eager to throw away your own race to preserve…” The words failed him, and he scowled in disgust as he waved an imperious hand at the pub around them. “To preserve _this_.”

The Doctor drew breath to argue, then forced himself to calm down. The Time Lord was distracting him from his goal. He didn’t have the leisure to discuss philosophy and morality right now. “If you were at the Maelstrom, then I know who you are. Only seven Time Lords went missing during that battle, and of those seven, only one had fought with me for a half-century, long enough to know me this well. Isn’t that right, Droga?” At the man’s smirk, the Doctor flashed a proud smile. “You see, I do remember all of you, even the ones who went missing.”

“Impressive,” the man complimented. “I didn’t think you’d remember even one of us.”

_I can’t but remember_ , the Doctor murmured to himself and tucked that thought away. He’d gotten the mystery Time Lord’s identity, but there was still more to wheedle out of him. He stroked his jaw as he mused, “So that’s where you went. Fell through a crack in the universe, hidden away from the rest of the war.”

“Oh, it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, Doctor.” Droga’s tone had reverted back to sickeningly conversational. “As I said, the dimension was barely a bubble, and the arrival of my TARDIS burst it. The dimensional stabilisers gave out immediately and she began jettisoning herself to slow the collapse, but it didn’t work. Not a pleasant way to die, being crushed to death.”

“But you weren’t.”

“Obviously not.” Droga enunciated his words with exaggerated care, as if his audience were a simple child. “I had a few seconds between each regeneration, and round about the sixth one, I managed to instruct her to throw the gravitic anomaliser out the way we came in. The burst of gravitons as it imploded was enough to widen the tear and suck her back out. But ten minutes there and we’d missed centuries here. The war was long over.”

“And now you’re here to finish what you started back in the war, all that time ago,” the Doctor stated, the sparkle in his eye betraying his absolute certainty in the conclusion.

Droga jerked in his seat. “What?” he snarled.

“Because all of this, taken together, doesn’t make sense. I mean, I’m sure you’re not above petty schemes of revenge against me for the end of the war. After all, petty scheming is what Time Lords are all about. But is it really worth all of this time and bother you’re putting in? I don’t think so.”

“Are you accusing me of lying?” Droga demanded.

The Doctor paused, frowning. “I thought that was pretty obvious.” He shrugged. “You were definitely lying about how I’d never find you again. I even told Nerys that. You’d said you wanted me to watch Donna’s life wither away, and I can’t do that if I can’t find you. But see, what this all really boils down to is that device of yours, the chaos gun. Because that’s the real puzzle here. It changes a random point in its target’s timeline, but you said you could choose what you wanted to change in Donna’s life. That’s a big difference.”

Droga’s nose wrinkled, a silent confirmation of the Doctor’s conjecture.

“But more to the point,” the Doctor continued, “you must have had it on you when you went into that pocket dimension, because no one has the knowledge or technology to build it now. So why did a Time Lord soldier carry one of the most powerful weapons in the universe into the Last Great Time War but never actually use it?”

Droga dismissed the question with a roll of his eyes. “You call it a weapon, but it’s hardly useful in a battle. Did you expect me to eliminate a battalion of a million Daleks one soldier at a time? But I suppose that’s typical Doctor, sending his comrades off on fool’s errands.”

The Doctor shook his head. “I know you’re using the war to distract me. It won’t work, so you might as well save the effort.”

“Oh, no, not at all. This is most amusing, actually.” He flicked two fingers at the Doctor in a lazy wave. “Go on, what else have you deduced?”

“We-ell,” the Doctor drawled, “there was the missing piece, who you were. I needed to know if the chaos gun came with its nifty upgrades or if you added them after the war. Sorry, Droga, but there’s no way you modified that thing.”

Droga lifted his nose in the air and spat haughtily, “I certainly could have done!”

“No, you couldn’t. You’re not a temporal engineer. That’s obvious. You ran intelligence and comms for us, and you were a dead shot with a sniper staser, but rubbish at ops and engineering. Though that probably points at a Celestial Intervention Agency background, doesn't it?” Droga made no attempt to refute the accusation, and the Doctor shook his head. “So, I’d say, you had that thing with you all this time because you were to use it on me, but only at the right time, and the opportunity never presented itself until now.”

“Oh, bravo, Doctor!” He rubbed his hands together, fingers tapping his lips. “You’ve always been so clever. You got most of it spot on. Just a few details you could not have known.”

“Enlighten me.”

The man turned serious. Gone was his slow formal drawl, replaced by stiff efficiency. “This has never been about punishing you for what you did, however much you deserve it. This was entirely a technical issue. You were right that my Spear of Rassilon can target specific points in a person’s timeline and change them. That was just one of the improvements it received since you left Gallifrey. It does, however, require target’s temporal data. I was assigned to your platoon so that it could attune to your timeline, but passive calibration is slow and your timeline is so very complex. It did not complete even a tenth of the reading in the five decades we served together.” He shrugged. “I don’t have the luxury of following you around any more, so -”

“So you found a way to calibrate it faster,” the Doctor finished for him, “by firing it, and you targeted Donna because you knew I’d come running each time.”

“Exactly.” He glanced around the pub, a disgusted sneer narrowing his eyes. “Humans are so simple. I recorded Ms. Noble’s entire timeline the first time I fired it, at one of the people at that… that ‘concert’, I suppose you’d call it. To call it a ‘concert’, you would have to consider that noise to be music.” He grimaced at the memory. “It only took me a moment to find an event in her life that I could change that would produce a large enough effect to get your attention. Those two shots read more of your timeline than I’d managed to get during the entire time I spent with you in the war, but there was still so much missing. I assure you, though, I’ve got it all now. All that was left was to lure you back one last time so I could finally complete my mission.”

The Doctor held up a finger to beg for a moment’s pause, then pulled out his sonic screwdriver, listened to it for a moment, and nodded with satisfaction. “Yes. Perfect,” he commented, then flashed a smile at Droga. “I knew if I could get you talking about the chaos gun, you’d give away where you hid it.”

“What?” the man exclaimed. “I did no such thing.”

“You did,” the Doctor insisted, nodding emphatically. “You glanced at it no less than four times while you were talking.”

He blinked and drew back, bewildered. “I did not!”

Grinning brightly, the Doctor raised the crystal of his screwdriver to his lips. “No, you’re right, you didn’t. Thought you might if I bluffed about it, though, and you did! Just a bit of a look, not so’s you’d notice, unless you were watching closely and then it was enough. Thank you.” Whilst he was talking, a woman in a black sheath with long auburn hair who’d been sitting at the bar and chatting into her mobile the whole time had jumped up as she clapped her phone closed. She strode across the room to fetch down an old-fashioned tea kettle from the wall hook where Droga had glanced.

“You… you… how?” the man sputtered as the disguised Nerys brought the kettle to the table and handed it to the Doctor.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Oh, yes!” the Doctor exclaimed. “Now let’s just switch off that chameleon circuit, shall we?” He fiddled with the handle of the teapot and suddenly it was a gray metal box with buttons and a small video screen on the top and a tube similar to a camera lens or a wide-diameter gun barrel sticking out of one side. 

“Give me that!” Droga growled and lunged across the table to snatch at it, but the Doctor pulled it away, keeping the barrel pointed directly at the man’s hearts.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” he warned. “In fact, I’d just sit back in my seat nice and relaxed, or this thing’ll likely to go off, and who knows what’d happen to you if it did.” When the Time Lord complied, his fists clenching in his lap as he seethed, the Doctor turned to the woman. “One chaos gun. Thank you, Nerys.”

With a satisfied nod, Nerys reached up to pull off her wig, then glanced across the room at her past self. “Hm, maybe not,” she murmured and stroked the long brown tresses as she sat down in the chair the Doctor had draped his coat on. “But I am never wearing a wig ever again.”

Droga glared at the woman. “How are you here? I saw you! You left him!”

“And you see,” began the Doctor, “that’s the problem, right there. I keep telling you all, but you won’t listen. You’re so confident that you’re superior to everyone else that you actually think people are what they seem. I do the same thing, mind you. You had me going there, you know, with all that talk of punishing me by undoing my companions. It’s exactly what I thought you were doing, so I accepted your threats without question.” 

He leant forward, over the device, to make his point clear. “But you see, Nerys here, she’s better than that. She’s got a superpower that lets her see through lies. She saw through me, and she saw right through you. It’s called cynicism, and she’s got that power honed. She’s a master artisan.”

“Oi!” cried Nerys, but the Doctor continued on.

“She couldn’t believe you were going through all this trouble to unravel history just to make me feel bad. She thought there had to be another reason, not that she had any idea what it might be. And she figured that you’d be watching every move we made and that you couldn’t imagine that she could actually be a threat, so she put on a show, pretended to walk out on me. Talented actress, she is. Got me good as well. I thought I’d lost another one. And,” he grinned as he thumbed over his shoulder, “she nattered for fifteen minutes into a dead mobile and you were none the wiser.”

Droga sputtered, unable to accept that the human could possibly have deceived him. “But I saw you. You dropped her at her home. She went back to her pathetic little life of eating and sleeping and blubbering around. You never went back for her.”

The Doctor shook his head at the Time Lord’s thickness. “You didn’t watch long enough to see ‘never’. I picked her back up two and a half months later. Even you wouldn’t watch for that long.”

“And it _was_ a ‘pathetic little life’,” Nerys snapped, glaring at the Doctor. “Knowing everything you did meant nothing, that at the end of it all, none of it would exist.” She turned to Droga. “But I did it. I made it look like everything was back to normal, cos I knew you’d be watching.” She glowered at the Doctor. “The things I do for you.”

“The things you do for Donna,” he corrected gently, then turned back to Droga. “Now, you see, with her safely out of the picture as far as you were concerned, it was just a matter of convincing you to let this thing out of your grasp just once.”

“What?”

“You really like that word, don’t you?” the Doctor observed. He sat back again, one hand resting protectively on the device. “I knew I couldn’t wrest it from you, but I could convince you to change it up little by little, until you finally decided it was safer off your person. Then it was just a matter of coming here to listen to you gloat and waiting until you gave away where you hid it.” He thumbed his chin, trying not to gloat himself. “That was the easiest part, actually. It’s the most important thing in the universe to you. You’d check to make sure it was safe at some point.”

Droga sat still and stiff, swallowing down his anger and humiliation. “So what are you going to do to me now? Fire that thing and send my timeline into chaos?”

“I’d thought I’d do that, but now that I know how it works, I don’t see why I’d need to. After all, you might have been firing it to get readings on me, but there’s one other Time Lord it knows best of all. I think if I just…” Studying the box in front of him, the Doctor tapped a few buttons and the screen glowed a pale blue. “Yes, there we go. The timeline of one Androgarildveshnicoram.” He peeked up at Droga. “Didn’t think I’d remembered your full name, did you? Well, I do. And I think I’ve found just the event to change.” 

Nerys reached over and grasped the Doctor’s wrist, touching skin-to-skin.

“Good. And now, Droga.” The Doctor paused to look the man in the eye and hold his attention for one last moment. “I hope you’ll do something good with this. I don’t know what that could be, given the circumstances, but I’m sure you’ll find an opportunity.”

“No!” Droga lunged for the box, but the Doctor tapped a button and the man vanished. Nerys gasped, her hand clenching the Doctor’s arm.

“He’s gone,” she whispered. “Is that it, Doctor? Is it all done?”

The Doctor checked the palm of his hand and breathed a sigh of relief. Nothing had changed in Donna’s timeline. The ink was still as faint as it had been the last time he’d looked. “It’s done, Nerys. It’s all over. Droga’s gone and Donna’s timeline is safe.” He patted her hand. “And the temporal field protected us both from the paradox. Exactly as I predicted.” 

Nerys drew her chair forward and peered at the box in front of the Doctor, cocking her head to see the screen. She reached over to turn it toward her then snatched her hand back before touching the metal and stuffed it under the table. The futuristic alien machine hadn’t been so scary when it was a copper kettle. “So,” she began, trying to swallow her apprehension, “he really was trying to use that thing on you. Donna was just a means to an end.”

“Your instincts were spot on,” the Doctor affirmed with a smile meant to ease her fears, though it didn’t really help. “It didn’t even occur to me that he might be lying about unravelling my companion’s lives, because it’s such a Time Lord thing to do. They’ve done it before. One of them, she’s got at least four versions of herself running around because of their meddling.”

Nerys looked up at him. “But why did you stop him before he told you what he was going to change? Didn’t you want to know what he was planning to do?”

The Doctor swallowed visibly before he answered her. “Frankly, no. I really don’t need to know. But I can take a pretty good guess.”

“Oh?”

“Well, you heard him.” He took a deep breath. He never enjoyed talking about this bit. “That war we talked about, the Last Great Time War. It was a big one, the biggest in the universe. The Time Lords…” The Doctor paused, then clarified to include himself in the explanation. “We went to war with a race called the Daleks. You remember them, don’t you? Tin can robots flying over London, a bit before I met you, ‘round about the time of the Cyberman ghosts.”

“Yeah.” Nerys shuddered at the memory. “First those big stomping robots in everyone’s houses, and then the flying ones screaming at everything. Not something you forget.” 

“Yes.” The Doctor swallowed against his own painful recollections. “The Daleks, they were created by a race called the Kaleds, and I happened to be there at the seminal moment. I had the chance to destroy the newly-created Daleks, and I chose not to. I don’t much like the idea of genocide, even for screamy slime creatures encased in shiny metal pepper pots.” He fell silent for a few breaths, and scratched at the back of his neck. “The Time Lords, they were never exactly happy about that, and I expect that Droga was tasked to change that event so that the Daleks never existed and thus the war would have never happened.”

She recoiled from the device like it had sprouted claws and was tensing to lunge at her. “That thing could do that? It could’ve changed your mind, way back then?”

“No, that it can’t do. But it could change the situation.” Licking his lips, he gazed pensively down at the symbols flickering on the device’s screen. “He could have put the decision in the hands of one my companions at the time, and I’ve no doubt what they would have chosen to do.”

Nerys frowned, still staring at the innocent-looking alien contraption. “That’d be good, wouldn’t it? No horrible war across the galaxy. But,” she continued before the Doctor could interrupt, “that would change millions of peoples’ lives, wouldn’t it? I mean, it was centuries, you were talking about with him. Millions of people, with one little button press.”

“Trillions of people, more like,” he corrected with a grim nod. “Trillions and more. But yes.”

“This is what you were talking about, isn’t it? What you were trying to tell me. You might think it’s clear which is better, but you don’t really know what’s going to happen, how it’s all going to turn out.” Nerys tore her eyes from the device and shifted in her seat so she didn’t have to look at either it or the Doctor. “Well. I can’t say I understand any of this time business, and I’m sorry about your war and all that, but doing anything like that, changing that much of the universe and history, it doesn’t sound particularly safe to me.”

The Doctor nodded. “It’s the act of a desperate people, afraid of dying and looking for any way out, even if it sacrificed the rest of reality.”

“Yeah.” Nerys eyed him sidelong. “Now what?”

The Doctor reached up and tapped the side of the chaos gun. “Now I restore the original timeline, where Donna never married Sam, where none of this ever happened. Unless…” He fell silent.

“Unless what, Doctor?”

Reaching forward, he took her hand and squeezed it gently. “I promised that I’d consult with you, to discuss what you want, how you want this to go. I can restore any of the timelines that I’ve already seen, or I could leave everything the way it is now. Or, given this thing’s capabilities, I could change another event in Donna’s life and we can see if that’s better. But the one thing I can’t do is guarantee how anything is going to turn out.” He held her gaze until she indicated her comprehension with a slight nod. “So, what do you think?”

Nerys turned to watch herself and her friends, drinking and laughing the evening away. She remembered this night well, for it was one of the few where her best friend had met a bloke at the pub and the girls hadn’t walked - or staggered, rather - home together. Donna had gone out dancing with Sam and, at three in the morning, had woken Nerys with a phone call to gush about the night and the bloke that had swept her off her feet. One tiny moment, one that would happen about a half hour hence, had changed Donna’s life forever, had transformed her from an office worker doggedly following reality programmes and celebrity news and given her a husband, a family, a career. From what the Doctor had told her of the nearly-forgotten timeline, without this encounter, Donna had continued on, temping and alone, living the life that Nerys had now. The only difference was that she’d chosen to go with the Doctor when he’d asked.

Could she really choose? Nerys wasn’t even sure which choice Donna would make for herself. Sure, the life she had now - would have, in this future - seemed suited to her, but what about the timeline where she’d had two children? Shouldn’t she choose that? And in the timeline that the Doctor had come from, she must have also enjoyed travelling with him; Donna wasn’t the sort to keep mum if she didn’t like something. And to further complicate matters, Nerys knew nothing of her own life in that alternate time and wondered if giving Donna a good life would ruin her own.

Nerys turned back to the table and sneered when she found it empty. Since Droga had never been here, he’d not ordered his drink and had left nothing behind. A mouthful of expensive Scotch would go down well right about now. 

“I think,” she began as she raised her eyes to study the Doctor’s concerned expression. He was worried, for her of all people, for how she’d fare through all of this. He’d always been. It was plain on his face, in those ancient, wise, mad eyes, and she had no idea how she’d missed that all this time. 

“I think,” she continued in a softer, less acrimonious tone, “that no one’s got the savvy to make that choice. Not me, not bloody Droga, certainly not you. No one should have chosen in the first place, so it’s got to go back.” She looked around for that whisky again and, finding nothing, sighed. “There. I said it. It’s done.”

“Are you sure?” the Doctor asked.

Rolling her eyes, Nerys heaved a great sigh. “Don’t make me have to say it again. It was hard enough the first time.”

The Doctor nodded, a profoundly sad but fond smile playing at his lips. “Thank you, Nerys. For everything.”

She jumped up, nearly toppling her chair backwards, and the Doctor sprang to his feet with her. “Goodbye, Doctor.”

“Can I take you home?”

“No. It won’t matter where I’ll be when... so…” She fled before any tears could fall. She refused to let the Doctor see that.

The Doctor sat back down and absorbed himself in fiddling with the device, watching Donna and her mates out of the corner of his eye whilst trying not to dwell on the future version of one of those friends. The four-dimensional data matrix contained detailed timelines of himself, Donna, Nerys, Droga, and the myriad comrades who’d fought with them in the war, as well as unconnected snapshots of thousands, perhaps millions, of people who had been near the device at one time or another. Donna’s entry was particularly complex for a human, with its multiple branches created by Droga reconnecting with each other every time he’d used the device on her. Untangling the strands enough to find the right way to change the event took almost all his concentration, that he almost missed the arrival of Donna’s current and soon-to-be-not future husband.

Samuel Thomas sauntered into the pub with two mates, all of them in smart business suits. Whilst one of them headed to the bar to fetch drinks, he and the other chose a table coincidentally near the Doctor and far from the raucous hen night on the other end of the establishment. When their friend joined them with three dark beers, they began chatting about their work until one of them pointed out the women at the far table. They listened a bit to the loud banter then traded first impressions, and the Doctor’s eyes sparkled when he heard Sam single out “the ginger” as the one he’d like to meet.

At her table, Donna jerked her head toward the bar and gestured a question at Nerys, and they rose together to fetch another round for the table. 

“Now’s your chance,” Sam’s friend hissed, shoving him to urge him to action.

The Doctor glanced down at the device in his lap. He hadn’t managed to sort it, and the crucial moment was about to pass. “Maybe the old-fashioned way is best,” he murmured.

As Sam stood up with his beer and gathered his confidence to approach Donna, the Doctor shoved the box into a dimensional jacket pocket and, springing from his seat, dashed off to collide neatly with Sam and splash his drink all over the both of them.

“Oh, sorry, sorry! Didn’t see you there,” he apologised as he steadied the man. He pulled a large linen napkin embroidered with “Milliway’s” in glittering dark blue thread from his pocket and started sopping away the beer, keeping himself carefully between Sam and his target.

Craning his head around the taller man, Sam glanced back and forth between the mess of his suit and the red-haired woman, who changed her mind and turned to head off toward the ladies’ loo. The opportunity was over, but if he could meet the ginger’s pretty but rather imposing friend, perhaps that would work as well. First, he had to get rid of the clumsy oaf. “No problem, mate. These things happen,” he said, trying to wave him off.

“Shouldn’t stain the fabric, at least,” the Doctor commented. “The waterproofing they put on things these days, it’s just brilliant. But if you need a few quid for drycleaning? Or anything else I could do?”

“Nah, I don’t, thanks. Really, I’m fine.” Leaving the man babbling to thin air, Sam caught up to the blond woman at the bar and introduced himself, and they chatted as they waited for new drinks.

The shift of the timestream in the Doctor’s head felt different this time, which only made sense. This was a natural recalculation, not the forced disjunction he’d experienced too many times recently. It staggered him, and, with just enough presence of mind to grab his coat from the nearby chair, he stumbled toward the main entrance, concentrating hard to hold the current timestream steady for a few more seconds, just long enough to get him out of the pub and onto the empty pavement beyond. Just a few more steps and…

The Doctor crumpled against the door, clutching desperately to the coat balled in his arms.


	11. Chapter 11

“ _DOCTOR!_ ”

Donna was yelling his name. That was a common enough occurrence, though it usually wasn’t a good thing. It meant either that she was in danger or that he’d done something particularly stupid. Often it was both. He wondered which it was this time. Something else strange about this still niggled at him, though. Perhaps it was the fact that her voice was coming from underneath him.

“Donna?” He wasn’t sure if she had heard him speak at all, because he almost didn’t hear it himself.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he groaned, the word far stronger than the last. Everything was so hazy. “What happened?”

“You had another bit of ‘weird’ and toppled. You sure you’re all right?”

The realisation finally hit him. This was Donna. She was with him. It had worked. He’d succeeded in restoring the timeline. “Oh! Better than all right. Fantastic! _Molto bene!_ ”

“That’s brilliant! Could you do me a favour, then, Doctor?”

“What’s that?”

“ _Get off me!_ ”

Oh. Perhaps he wasn’t quite sorted yet. He rolled a bit to peel himself off his companion, and she grabbed him by the shoulders to hold him steady as he found his feet. The gesture felt so familiar, and he remembered she’d done the same a minute earlier for her but days ago for him. Around them, the crowd of journalists and guests gawked at him, this spectacle being their only entertainment as they waited to go backstage. 

“Ah, yes, backstage. The Spice Girls concert,” he recounted, more to convince himself that everything had been restored than anything else. “You couldn’t go the first time because of the wedding, and so here we are!”

Donna eyed him with suspicion. “Yeah, I just said that, not two minutes ago. Why are you saying it all again? What just happened?”

“Nothing, Donna, I’m fine,” he assured her. “Everything’s fine. No more anomalies. Just clearing a few cobwebs up here.” He tapped his temple.

She wasn’t convinced, but knew the Doctor would never admit when he wasn’t feeling well. She shrugged. “That’d take an industrial hoover.” She bent down to snag a piece of paper at the Doctor’s feet and hand it to him. “Here. You dropped this. Your pass.”

“Thanks. Can’t get in without it.” He stowed it away, then shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. “Didn’t you say your friend Nerys is here somewhere?”

“Yeah.” She flashed a devious grin. “Oh, only if I could tell her I did get to come to this concert, and I got to meet the Spice Girls! She’d just die.”

The Doctor laughed and shook his head. “Can’t, really.”

“No, but I can dream.”

He popped up on his tiptoes to look out at the thinning crowd in the main passage. “Don’t think she’d find you here.”

Donna turned to look in the same direction. “In a crowd like this? Not a chance. They were down on the floor anyway. Sam got them prime seats, right by the stage. They’d have to come all the way ‘round to pass by here.”

The Doctor was glad Donna’s attention was distracted, as he hadn’t quite been able to hide a smile at hearing the name of Nerys’ concert date. “Sam? I thought you said his name was Devon.”

“Devon?” Donna frowned up at him. “Where’d you hear that name?”

He shrugged. “That’s what I thought you said.”

“Nah. Only Devon I know is Devon Blackman. Total wanker. Dated him for a bit, and Nerys stayed well away from him after that.” She grimaced at the memory of the man. “No, her husband’s Sam, and he’s a catch.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Nice bloke, clever, treats her well, and he’s managed to chip a little ice off her heart,” she grinned as she mimed hitting a pick with a hammer. “And he’s got the money to make them comfortable. They just moved into a bigger house, cos of the twins, of course, but they’re already planning for more.”

“Good for her,” the Doctor beamed, clasping his hands behind his back. “How’d they meet?”

“In a pub, oh, five years ago now. Hen night, you know, and he saw her at the bar and thought she looked nice. That’s what he says anyway. I say he settled for her cos he didn’t see me first.” She punctuated her claim with a hair toss and seductive wiggle, then settled her fists on her hips. “But what are you on about? Why are you asking about Nerys all of a sudden?”

Stepping back, the Doctor scratched at the back of his neck as he explained, a bit sheepishly, “I realised I don’t really know much about you. You know, your life and your family. I mean, you’ve said a bit about your mum, and I suppose I’ve seen most of your friends at the wedding, but I couldn’t name a one. So I thought I’d ask.”

Donna gaped in surprise, then smiled, a cheeky sparkle in her eye. “Being around humans is rubbing off on you. Honestly, I’ve not much to tell that’s interesting, especially compared to what you’re showing me, but there’s a bit. Maybe over a lager and some chips, but after, cos it looks like they’re starting to let people in.”

The Doctor offered Donna his arm, and when she took it, he pulled her close. “Ready for the next great adventure?”

“Always.”


	12. Epilogue

The Time Lord blinked hard and slapped his hands to his face, trying to scrub a stream of sudden, intense visions out of his mind’s eye. He’d been furiously trying to sort through the incoming invasion reports, which had been landing on his vidscreen so fast that the notifications were scrolling away faster than he could read them, when what seemed like a lifetime of hallucinations flooded him. His first thought was that he’d been attacked somehow, but it hadn’t the feel of a psychic intrusion. _Too personal, too familiar_ , he thought, _more like a retroregenerative psychosis, though I’d think this face is too old for that now. Just a momentary breakdown, then. Perhaps stress-induced_. That was an understatement. The current situation went far beyond stress. Whatever the episode had been, he couldn’t afford to worry about it now. He had work to do. He forced himself to focus again on his work and promised himself that if they got out of this mess, he’d see a doctor straightaway.

_Doctor._

All the images in his head coalesced into an entire alternate timeline centered on that one word, the last person he had seen as it had shattered and reformed into this reality. The Doctor had gotten ahold of the Spear of Rassilon and used it on him, selecting a single moment in his life to tweak, to change the majority of his lives and place him… _here and now_ , he groaned to himself. _So this is what revenge is like on the receiving end. An unwinnable situation and a brutal, ignoble death._

But it was more than that. So much had changed. In this reality, he’d never joined the Celestial Intervention Agency and hadn’t spent lives as a temporal spy both on Gallifrey and across the universe. He hadn’t been tasked to change the Doctor’s mistake and thus forced to the front lines of a war for which he’d had no training or experience. In this life, he was a military man, a distinguished commander of the Chancellory Guard for two whole incarnations, who’d volunteered for the army when the planet went to war. He’d led battalions, risen to the rank of colonel, and now served on the General’s commanding staff. 

His jaw dropped open as he scanned back through his lives and pinpointed the tiny change the Doctor had made. In his eighty-first year at the Academy, a computer glitch had registered him in the wrong class. That was the moment the timeline had branched. An unexpected elective hadn’t made much of a difference in his education, but for once, he hadn’t been among his usual mates. Instead, he’d met Tharan. Tharan, who’d never left his side since, who’d suggested his temperament was better suited for the Guard than for espionage, who’d given him a reason to remain planetside. Their two children, from two incarnations past for him and one for Tharan, were long grown and had become Time Lords themselves, and they’d planned for more once the war ended. If it ended well.

The Doctor hadn’t sought revenge, hadn’t sent him to his death. He’d given him a partner. A family. A career. A life.

He clapped a hand to his mouth as his eyes followed the notifications flying across his screen, then sprang from his console in the corner of the War Room and dashed out toward comms. As he ducked out into the corridor, he nearly collided with the person he needed to see: the General, returning from ordering more reinforcements to Arcadia in a vain attempt to save the city.

“Sir!” he cried, snapping to attention. “I -”

“Gone through all of the reports already?” the General spat at him. “I suppose it’s easy when all they say is, ‘Daleks have landed!’”

“Yes, sir,” he blurted, “I mean, no, sir, but I’ve got something important to tell you.”

“Then spit it out, Androgar, or you might never get another chance.”

“Sir, it’s the Doctor,” Androgar began, but the General cut him off with an irritable wave of his hand.

“Yes, yes, it’s always the Doctor,” he barked. “What, did he graffiti more walls?”

“No, sir. Not at all.” He swallowed, drumming up his courage. “But there’s something you need to know about him.”

The General tapped his hand on his robes, betraying his irritation. “And what’s that?”

“He’s planning something, sir -”

“We already know that!” the General snapped. “He’s got the Moment and he’s mad enough to use it. Do not waste my time, Androgar.”

“I am not, sir!” Androgar insisted. “I am telling you, the Doctor is not mad.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He is not mad,” Androgar reiterated. “He knows what he’s doing. I don’t know what he’s planning, but, sir, you have to trust him and do what he says.”

The General’s eyes narrowed. “Where did this come from, Androgar? Why are you saying this now?”

Androgar clenched his fists and forced himself to remain calm and rational. “I can’t say, sir,” he replied with deference. “All I know is that he’s trying, and he is our best chance of surviving this. If there’s a way out, he’ll find it.”

The General’s hard gaze bored into Androgar’s eyes for a long moment. Then his nose wrinkled into a brief scowl before he nodded. “I shall take your opinion into consideration.” It was all Androgar could hope for.

An alert blared out of the War Room, and general and colonel turned as one to see the hologram floating above the battlefield monitor in the centre of the room. It proclaimed in tall, clear sigils, “GALLIFREY STANDS”.

“Another one,” Androgar breathed. The Doctor certainly did like his graffiti.

“Are you sure the message is from him?” the General demanded as they strode in and took their places amongst the other officers.

Androgar kept his countenance neutral. “Oh, yes.”

“Why would he do that? What’s the mad fool talking about now.”

 _He is not mad_ , Androgar repeated to himself.

A floating holo screen blinked on above their heads, and a figure with floppy hair and an excited grin turned toward them. Androgar didn’t recognise this one. ”Hello! Hello! Gallifrey High Command, this is the Doctor speaking.”

Another screen appeared, and the face that appeared was the one that Androgar had last seen only a microspan earlier in some kind of strange subjective time. “Hello! Also the Doctor. Can you hear me?” Hope blossomed in his chest, though he couldn’t help wondering if, after all of these time shifts and, in this “new” timeline, face changes, this Doctor had any idea who he was.

A third screen flashed on, and Androgar saw his old comrade - his old quarry - joining his future incarnations. “Also the Doctor, standing ready.” This Doctor hadn’t a clue; a half century of fighting the Daleks together and trying to save the universe from destruction was now only a fogged memory.

“Dear God, three of them,” the General muttered beside him. “All my worst nightmares at once.”

The Doctor in the pinstripe suit stepped forward. “General, we have a plan.”

And Androgar knew that the war was finally over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!


End file.
